The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

by Stephanie Butland

  The supporting cast will be made up of regular learners from classes in Edinburgh, who range in age from their early twenties to mid-seventies.

  The show, at the Dragon’s Nest pub in Minto Street in Newington, is expected to sell out, not least because members of the cast will join audience members for an informal tango session after the show. Only dancers already registered with The Tango Sisters will be eligible to take part in the production.

  From: Seb

  Sent: 14 June, 2018

  To: Ailsa

  Subject: Embra

  Hello, BlueHeart,

  Well, we made the Edinburgh Journal ! I was going to pretend Roz sent me the cutting but I’ve got a Google alert set on my name. (I feel as though we should have ultimate honesty now that we’ve – you know. Read Romeo and Juliet together.)

  What’s new in your world? Are you onto macchiato yet? If not, don’t worry about it. It’s a stupid drink. Have a coffee or have a hot chocolate. Or have both, one after the other.

  What else is going on?

  I’m coming up next weekend. We’re having a read-through. Meredith is in Edinburgh doing something the day before, so Roz is taking advantage and introducing everyone. Then Roz is coming down to London to do some intensive work with me and Meredith. Do you want to meet up? I’d love to see you. I can book a hotel.

  Seb x

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Hello, Seb,

  It makes it all seem very close, doesn’t it?

  What’s new? Not a lot. Except I know the difference between a mochaccino and a macchiato. (Vegan unicorn.) Everything’s pretty quiet. I’ve made a couple of appointments to find out more about the legal conversion course I’ve been looking at. The more I think about it, the more I want to do it. We’re all supposed to accept that life’s not fair but I think I could do something to make it fairer. Apple might have come from someone who worked with the law – she seems pretty keen, and jumps up and down in my chest every time I think about the people who need someone to be on their side, especially when it comes to health. Organ donation, living wills, assisted suicide – they are all places where people need advocacy.

  My doctors are happy. We’re tweaking the medication down another notch. So it’s all good, I suppose, in an everyday sort of way.

  It’s still a bit weird with my mother not here. I really miss her sometimes, and then I see her and we end up bickering. I got annoyed with her for calling you ‘This Seb’, as in: ‘I see This Seb is going to be in Edinburgh’. Afterwards I thought, I should have just left it.

  I thought (if I’d thought) that if you were rehearsing, you’d just all do it together, for a few weeks beforehand. Still, I also used to think coffee was coffee, and dancing was dancing.

  I’m off next Saturday. It would be lovely to catch up – let me know what time your train gets in and I can meet you. And you’re welcome to stay. But thank you for not assuming.

  Ailsa x

  From: Seb

  To: Ailsa

  You get more ordinary as the days go by, BlueHeart. Congratulations. I’m really pleased for you.

  I can see you standing up for people. You were fierce with me when I was slacking. One day what I’ll be most famous for is knowing you. I’ll sell these emails for millions.

  If you’re being paid to do an acting job, yeah, it’s usually all in one go, and you do as you’re told. If you’re not – it’s a bit more like the director is Bulgaria, and the actors are – well, all countries with more influence than Bulgaria. The stars can choose to behave like Russia if they want to. Roz is doing the best she can with people’s free time. I’m doing my best to fit in.

  From: Ailsa

  To: Seb

  Say no more. I’ll see you on Saturday. X

  23 June, 2018

  ‘Well hello, BlueHeart.’ Seb is one of the first travellers off the train on this fine June day. Once he spots her it seems that he’s next to her in two strides. He puts down his bag and pulls her in to him, his arms around her waist, his nose in her hair. She’s put her hands around his neck, her face against his chest. He’s in the denim jacket he wore for Hello Saturday; the button presses into her cheek, and her glasses squash the side of her face, but she doesn’t care.

  Ailsa had wondered, as she walked to the station, quite how things would be when she saw Seb again. He’s been upfront about the sex in their emails, so it wasn’t as though they were pretending it hadn’t happened, or that it had been a mistake. But there had also been nothing to suggest that it was more than a one-off. Although even if it was, it was worth it, just for the moment when he took a look at the scar, ran his finger over it, said, ‘I’ve seen worse tattoos, if I’m honest, BlueHeart.’ And then kissed it, from top to bottom and back to the top again.

  And then he kisses her forehead, and then her cheeks, the way celebrities kiss each other on chat shows, and then the tips of their noses touch, pivot, and then – yes, there’s his mouth, on hers. Although Ailsa had thought she remembers everything about that night, there’s a sudden hot pulse of visceral memory, and the bump of Apple in her chest. Thinking about Seb and being with Seb is the difference between thinking about the sea and standing on the tide line.

  He looks around, up and behind him. ‘This place has too many exits. Lead the way.’

  ‘Right.’ And they’re off, heading through pedestrians, up the escalator and across the walkway.

  He stops at the Sir Walter Scott quotes on the glass panels that decorate this part of the station, smiles and puts his arm around her shoulder. ‘Romantic soul, wasn’t he?’

  The panel he is looking at reads: ‘Scarce one person out of twenty marries his first love, and scarce one out of twenty of the remainder has cause to rejoice at doing so. ’

  ‘Well, Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t argue,’ Ailsa says.

  Seb turns to the next panel and reads, ‘   “To enjoy leisure it is absolutely necessary it should be preceded by occupation.”   ’

  ‘That’s true enough.’ Ailsa thinks of how good it feels to get into bed when she’s worked all day; how much she looks forward to seeing Emily when she’s spent the previous four hours being polite to strangers. ‘And look at this.’ She turns around and leads Seb to the other side of the walkway. They dodge a couple (another couple?) and stand in front of a decorated panel that reads: ‘Life is dear even to those who feel it as a burden.’

  ‘Having a picture of a heart on it doesn’t make it cheerful,’ Seb says.

  *

  ‘You weren’t kidding about the temperature,’ Seb says. He pulls a hat from his bag, pulls it onto his head, down over his ears.

  Ailsa laughs. ‘I did warn you. June in Edinburgh equals March in Highgate.’

  Seb puts an arm across her shoulders in a way that is beginning to feel normal. ‘I know you did. But – I’m an optimist. And anyway, I’ve got an excuse to get close. Leech the warmth from you.’

  ‘Leech away,’ she says.

  They travel all the way around the open-top bus route, Waverley to Waverley, without getting off. Seb twitches an eyebrow at her when Burke and Hare are mentioned as they look down into the graveyards of St John’s and St Cuthbert’s churches. (‘I’m guessing you’re a fan,’ he says, and she shoves him with her elbow and says, ‘Not of the murdering’.) He wipes away an imaginary tear when they hear about Greyfriars Bobby; Ailsa hands him an imaginary handkerchief.

  ‘All these bridges that are streets,’ he says as they disembark, ‘it’s weird.’

  ‘Or a good use of space.’

  ‘Easier than moving a rock, I guess.’

  The tour guide recognises him and he stops for a photo, in front of the bus, sunglasses on, thumbs up – Ailsa declines to be included – and now, here they are, back on the pavement. It’s nearly five o’clock.

  Ailsa’s about to suggest they go home when Seb says, ‘Right. I’d say coffee, but are you sick of it? Maybe tea? Really just somewhere to be warm.’
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  ‘Should we not be going to buy you a jumper?’

  ‘My fingers are too cold. Where’s good? Do you want to show me where you work? Or are you sick of the sight of the place?’

  Ailsa laughs. ‘Not yet. I love it. But we’re the wrong side of the city.’

  She takes him to the food hall in Jenners, because they’re almost on top of it where they get off the bus. It’s odd to be there with him. She’s only ever been here with her mother, when they’ve been shopping, or have fancied a change from their usual Rose Street haunt.

  ‘What’s up?’ Seb asks.

  ‘I was just thinking about having tea,’ Ailsa says, ‘and how it never used to be – an end in itself. Just something you did while you were doing something else. Like read a book or wait for an appointment.’

  ‘It is something you do while you’re doing something else,’ Seb says, ‘like talking to me. C’mon, Ailsa,’ he says, and her name is different in an English mouth, sharp at the beginning and end – not bad, just different enough to make her notice when he says it, as though she’s getting the smallest of static shocks. ‘I know you well enough by now. You’re not your usual self. Have you got scurvy?’

  ‘Scurvy?’

  ‘I don’t mean scurvy, do I? What is it you get when you don’t have enough carbohydrate?’

  Ailsa laughs. ‘Thinner? Scurvy’s what you get without vitamin C. I’ve plenty of that, believe you me.’

  ‘Rickets, then? Lack of calcium?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got rickets. Not yet.’

  ‘Well, good. But there’s something wrong, isn’t there? I’m not as green as a cabbage, as you would say.’

  ‘You’re not as green as you’re cabbage-looking.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  Ailsa sits back and takes her cup in her hands. She wonders if she can explain how she’s feeling – unstable, adrift, knowing everything she isn’t but unsure of what she is.

  Seb is waiting. Not in a finger-tapping way, just pouring his tea, sitting back. He takes off his sunglasses. Even though the light at their table, away from the window, is muted, he would have kept the shades on a month ago. His eye is healing, bit by bit, the way her body is strengthening, her life expanding.

  She says, ‘I’m not going to fall down dead any minute, anymore. And that changes things. I mean, my mother’s been amazing through my whole life, but for most of that I’ve needed protecting. Now . . .’

  ‘Even with only one fully functioning eye, I see a but,’ Seb says.

  Ailsa sighs. ‘You know I went over to see her? Things were a wee bit tense. I can’t make her see that there are things I want to do now, and they don’t mean I love her any less, they’re just . . . they are important to me. I’ve long enough in my life now to find out for myself.’

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘I want to find out about my biological father. But just the mention of him and she shuts the conversation down. Actually, she cried, and then she went outside to have a cigarette, and when she came back in she said, “I just cannae, Ailsa. I’m sorry, I cannae talk about him.”   ’ Ailsa had said that she understood, because she did, in that moment, with the distress coming off her mother like the smell of Marlboro. ‘There’s only once in my life that she’s told me about him, properly, and that was when I was ill enough that people have to give you what you want.’

  Seb nods. ‘Why is she so anti-him?’

  ‘He’s never been around. I don’t think it’s him specifically, I think it’s more that he left us and he’s never been around and she doesn’t see why I should want to meet him now.’

  ‘Because she’s done all the work and now he’s going to turn up for the fun part? I can see her point.’

  ‘Something like that. She thinks I’ve better things to be thinking about, than my father and This Seb.’ She’ll spare him the WAG comments.

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t be the first mother to be opposed to me. Isn’t she impressed with your unicorn barrister plan?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. I was going to talk to her about it but – well, we got on to my father first. And then’ – how to be fair, about this – ‘she’s not – all men are bastards. She just hasn’t had a lot of luck with relationships. Or time for them. So mentioning my father didn’t go down well. She wanted to know why. It’s hard to explain that it’s just for – for –’ She thinks for a minute. ‘for completeness.’ Yes, that’s it. If you have a four-chambered heart, there are things that go with it. A job. A plan. Knowing who your parents are, or were, even if they aren’t together. Making choices about all of these things.

  He touches the back of her hand across the table, smiles a gentle just-for-you smile. ‘But she’s not going to be up for a family reunion? No letting bygones be bygones?’

  Ailsa laughs at the thought of her mother and father meeting, her mother tolerating a kiss on the cheek, saying, ‘It’s all in the past’. ‘I don’t think my mother would know a bygone if it hit her on the backside.’

  ‘On the what?’

  She’s about to repeat herself when she notices his smile, lets it finds hers. ‘On the arse.’

  ‘I love the way you say that. So, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, I’ve written a blog post,’ she says. ‘I can show you, when we get back. Maybe you can tell me what you think?’

  Seb nods. ‘Of course.’ Then he smiles, a suggestive curl to his lip, an unmistakable glint in his eye. She feels naked under it. ‘I’m staying at yours, then?’

  Style it out, Ailsa, style it out. ‘Did I not say in my emails? I thought I’d cook.’ When they go out Seb always insists on paying and that just doesn’t feel right. Plus, now that she’s working she’s all the more aware of what everything costs. Her lunchtime soup and sparkling water, at the Northbridge Brasserie before they got on the bus, was the equivalent of two hours of coffee-making. She needs to be more mindful of money. And she doesn’t want Seb to be recognised again, and her to be photographed, published. The bus people didn’t have to ask; they could have just taken a quiet photo, and then Ailsa might have been in it.

  Seb looks as though she’s given him a BAFTA. ‘Really?’

  ‘Don’t get excited, I’m no Masterchef,’ Ailsa says, ‘and we could go out, if you’d rather, but . . .’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Seb says. ‘I don’t know anyone who cooks. Except Yusef, and I haven’t seen him since February.’

  Ailsa says, ‘No, you’re kidding. You don’t know anyone who cooks?’

  ‘Well,’ Seb says, ‘bacon sandwiches, scrambled eggs, that sort of thing. My sister makes nice pasta things. Not making her own pasta. But other than that it’s takeaways or stuff from Waitrose.’

  Ailsa laughs. ‘I don’t know anyone who makes their own pasta.’ Ah. But Lennox said he’d learned, at university, from a flatmate. He’d told her about it, one day, when she was sitting at his bedside – how he’d been amazed by how simple it is. She feels caught in a lie. How easily it is to change someone, once they’re dead. She wonders what misremembrances there would be of her, now, if things had been different.

  ‘Yusef does,’ Seb says. ‘I’ll introduce you when he comes back.’

  Ailsa can’t process the long-term relationship, or at least the future visits to London, it implies. Not that Seb means being a couple. Just – knowing each other. He seems to be friends with a lot of people he’s slept with. Or it could be that he sleeps with most of his friends. Emily says what Seb might want is one thing, but what Ailsa wants is the other half of the equation. But Ailsa has no idea. That is, she loves the thought of spending time with Seb, of looking forward and seeing him there. But she doesn’t know how to look forward. Not properly, anyway, not yet. Apple seems to think it will be fine. But Ailsa has only ever been in love when one of them is dying.

  Back to safe territory. ‘It sounds like your standards for home-cooked food are good and low, then.’

  ‘Low standards never let you do
wn,’ Seb says. ‘Do we have to go and spear a sabre-toothed tiger first?’

  ‘We could,’ Ailsa says, ‘or we could go to the supermarket on our way back. You decide.’

  ‘Supermarket,’ he says. ‘I didn’t bring my spear.’

  So that’s what they do. It’s almost like they’re a couple.

  *

  It’s odd, though, having someone else in the flat. Odd, too, how quickly Ailsa has got used to Hayley’s absence. Just the sound of Seb moving around, flushing the loo, throwing himself down on the sofa, makes Ailsa stop and listen as she stands in the kitchen. She’s dismissed Seb from helping – ‘I don’t want you cutting your thumb off; Roz will kill me’ – and chops vegetables for the ratatouille contentedly. She’ll give it an hour in the oven, then grill the pork chops. Easy. Seb seems determined to be impressed/excited, though, so she lets him.

  He closes the blinds and takes off his sunglasses, attempts to read the paper, gives up, has a look through Ailsa’s law brochure, gives up faster.

  ‘Put the TV on if you like,’ Ailsa says. ‘I’ll come and join you shortly.’

  ‘Was there something you wanted me to read? About your dad?’

  She had been going to leave it until later, but this might be as good a time as any. ‘My biological father,’ she says, ‘if you don’t mind. Dad means riding bikes and helping with your homework. Father is . . .’

  ‘I get it,’ Seb says. ‘Sperm. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. Paper or screen?’ Ailsa loves how easy this is.

  ‘Paper, please. Nice big font size.’

  She opens her laptop, puts the printer on, opens the document, enlarges the text size, and sends it to print.

  She goes back into the kitchen and tries not to think about Seb, sitting in the next room reading the story of the beginning of her life.

  The lid goes on the dish, the dish goes into the oven and Ailsa sets the timer so she doesn’t forget the half-an-hour stir point. She washes up the knife and chopping board, and puts the thyme away in the cupboard; then there’s really nothing else to be done in the kitchen. Nothing for it but to go and see what Seb has to say.