The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

by Stephanie Butland

  Ailsa laughs. ‘It must be all of ten days since we were here,’ she says. They’d spent a long evening at the Northbridge Brasserie after that first joint tango night, with Roz and a couple of the local actors.

  ‘Feels like longer,’ Seb says. ‘Theatre is hard. Good, but not like TV. There’s not a lot of time sitting around while someone sets the lighting up. Not much of a buffet.’

  ‘And it’s only your second day off this week,’ Ailsa says. She grins. He grins back. These moments – more and more of them, inconsequential, but not – are like a breath-worth of flying.

  ‘I’m not having a day off,’ Seb says, ‘I’m – reflecting. While the ladies do their mysterious lady acting. What? Why are you pointing your knife at me? That’s rude.’

  ‘In Scotland, it’s a sign of affection. And I feel as though I should pull you up on the mysterious-lady-acting thing,’ Ailsa says, ‘but I haven’t worked out why.’

  ‘Ah well,’ his smile widens to wickedness, ‘while you work it out, I’ll just sit here, reflecting on my part.’

  Ailsa laughs; she can’t help it. ‘You’re terrible.’

  ‘It’s too easy to get a rise out of you.’

  ‘That’s my line,’ she says.

  ‘Ailsa Rae . . .’ He laughs, and his foot finds her ankle under the table.

  Seb staying at Roz’s hasn’t really worked out. He’s a permanent fixture at Ailsa’s. In public – apart from the dancing – they don’t touch, except under tables, like this. In private it feels impossible not to be in contact. Ailsa isn’t sure when they became a couple, or if she wants them to be one. Or rather, if it’s a real relationship, or for-the-duration. They have an easy way of being, already, and sometimes it’s as though he reads her—

  ‘I like staying with you. Do you feel as though we’ve known each other forever?’

  —mind.

  ‘I was just thinking that.’

  ‘It’s funny,’ Seb says, leaning in so that he can touch her knees under the table, run his fingers over the insides of them, ‘I always thought living with someone would be boring, when the novelty wore off. But knowing someone better is – sexy. Don’t you think?’

  Ailsa can’t help but laugh. ‘Like I said. It’s been ten days,’ she says.

  ‘Have you ever lived with anyone for ten days?’

  She pulls her face into pretend-seriousness. ‘Good point.’

  ‘Me neither. You see.’ He smiles and sits back. Her knees feel cold, in the place where his hands were.

  ‘Is it going OK, though,’ she asks, ‘the play?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ He sounds neutral, matter-of-fact; if Ailsa was an actor, she supposes, she’d know what he meant. But she isn’t, and she doesn’t.

  ‘Is that not – should you not know by now?’ Two weeks until opening night. Sometimes she’s so excited about the prospect of it that she can’t stop smiling, but more and more Ailsa feels sick at the thought of it. And not dainty, mild butterfly-sickness, but serious post-operative nausea. Seb seems calm, but his sleep is twitchy, and he tutted at her this morning when she forgot to pick up her phone and had to go back for it.

  ‘Roz says that you never know until you’ve got an audience in front of you, and shame on you if you think anything different.’

  ‘I can imagine her saying that,’ Ailsa says. She can see the sense in it too. The difference between thinking that you can do something and doing it is the size of the mountain she thought, pre-transplant, that she would be climbing by now.

  ‘Have you fixed a date with your father?’ Seb asks.

  ‘Next Monday.’ There’s one of those moments, increasingly frequent, when their feelings for each other make another presence between them, vivid, alive, blotting out everything else.

  He nods. ‘How are you feeling about it? Have you talked to your mother yet?’

  ‘Nervous. Not really.’ She’s not going to get away with that. It’s the equivalent of telling a doctor that you’re fine. She tries harder. ‘I don’t know what to expect from him. And I know exactly what I’ll get from her.’ You’ll get what you deserve, Apple says, and the look in Seb’s eyes agrees. Great. They’re ganging up on her.

  He says, carefully, ‘I can see why she might be upset. I can see why you want to see him, too.’

  ‘Yes.’ Except she doesn’t, not really, but it’s too late to say so, and anyway, the blog. ‘Can we talk about something else? Please?’ She touches her foot to the inside of his ankle, rubs it back and forth, to say, this is not rejection.

  Seb smiles, and then leans forward, and Ailsa finds herself mirroring him. ‘Do you want to know a secret? A good one. From Roz. I’m not supposed to say anything. Promise not to leak it to the press?’

  Ailsa struggles for a straight face. ‘Promise.’

  ‘You know Love’s Labour’s Lost?’

  ‘Not intimately.’ Emily wrote an essay on it, mostly while keeping Ailsa company when she had flu in their second year; there was a lot of sighing and cursing. ‘Not Shakespeare’s most popular play, I’m told.’

  ‘Well, it was all news to me,’ Seb says, ‘not that that’s saying a lot. Apparently, it’s one of those plays that’s – of its time. Would have had Elizabethans rolling in the aisles. Modern audiences need a translator to explain why it’s supposed to be funny. But Roz is directing it at the Wheat Warehouse in London next year. Spring. Six-week season to start with, maybe a tour, depending on how it goes. It’s going to be a big deal. Proper pay. Serious theatre.’

  ‘Why not do something more popular? Are you going to be in it?’

  Seb laughs. ‘The thing with Roz is, she could make toothache popular. And anyway, she’s got a really strong – she’s got this idea that the way we live now is too black and white. You click “like” or you don’t. You vote yes or no. No one is allowed to be undecided. You can only be in public life if you’ve never shagged someone you shouldn’t have, in case the papers find out. And the world’s more complicated. Stuff gets hidden. We have unrealistic expectations. We’re divided. She thinks it’s relevant, and she wants to do a – well, she’s calling it a monochrome production. I don’t know what that means. But she’s excited.’

  ‘And is she giving you a part?’

  ‘Berowne,’ Seb says, ‘who has the longest speech in all of Shakespeare. We’re going to be busy, you and me.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Ailsa says. ‘Is that what your phone call was about?’ Seb had been on the phone when she got out of the shower; it had sounded businesslike, his spine straight as he stood, looking out of the window as he talked.

  ‘Yeah. Wilkie. He’s not keen.’

  ‘Why not?’ Ailsa has always been under the impression that actors needed work, and there was never enough around. Seb’s agent seems to have a different view.

  ‘He thinks I’m wasting my beautiful years, if I spend them on the stage. There’s plenty of time for Shakespeare when my TV Romeo days are over, according to him.’

  Ailsa thinks, not for the first time, about how miserable life as an actor is. The first day Seb rehearsed his fight scene, he came back pale-faced and blooming blue bruises across his back and on his thigh, and Ailsa felt sick at the thought of all her mother must have felt, watching as she bruised and ached. Rejection, waiting, bruising. At least Ailsa didn’t choose it. When she and her mother are having real conversations again, she’ll mention it. She’s doing her best to build bridges, but until she’s seen her father, it’s not going to be easy to move on.

  ‘Don’t you think – is that not a bit unfair? Being in this play and not knowing that you’re being measured up for something else?’ Seb’s face changes, from serious to a smile, but Ailsa doesn’t think she said anything funny. ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, I thought for a minute you were suggesting someone else’s life was unfair.’

  Ailsa sits back, a sudden, sharp movement. ‘That’s—’

  ‘What? Not fair?’

  Green eyes meet blue for a seco
nd: this could go either way. A decision. Ailsa laughs. ‘Bastard.’

  ‘That came out wrong,’ says Seb. ‘It was meant to be – what’s a word for light-hearted that doesn’t have the word heart in it?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Ailsa says. She doesn’t know where the time goes when they’re together. If only her hospital days had passed as swiftly, and this – this joy – would slow down, dissolve softly, instead of fizzing the days away from them.

  He leans back, signals for the bill. ‘You did say you start work at one? Do you want to walk over together?’

  ‘I’m not really like that, am I?’

  Seb looks at her, seriously. ‘No. But you have your moments.’

  Ailsa nods. ‘That is fair.’

  The bill arrives and Seb glances at it, puts thirty pounds to pay for their brunch on the table, and takes his sunglasses from his pocket, ready for the outside world. He hardly ever wears them indoors these days. Before he puts them on he hesitates, reaches for Ailsa’s hand, and looks into her eyes in a way that makes her forget to look for the familiar, well-spaced ‘V’s that show how he is healing.

  ‘You’re all right, you know,’ he says.

  If Ailsa isn’t immediately sure what he means, Apple is, lurching and contracting in her chest. ‘Is that English for something too?’

  Seb slips on his sunglasses, stands, and waits for her to stand and pick up her bag. He kisses the top of her head, a gesture somewhere between tenderness and a promise. ‘You know it is,’ he says, and he leads her out into the sunlight.

  It’s a short enough walk, ten minutes or so, fifteen if you dawdle, and it’s dawdling weather. Seb is wearing his trilby as well as his shades, and maybe he feels disguised or maybe their unspoken public policy has been rewritten, because he wraps his arm around her shoulder and they find a pace that almost matches, hip to hip. Ailsa can take the walk up to the old town without a rest, these days, but she doesn’t have a lot of breath for conversation; Seb is quiet too, looking around, looking up. Anyway, she’s thinking about what he just said. She does know what it means. She’s been telling herself that she’s not ready to love yet/only having a fling. But Apple hasn’t been listening. Ailsa’s chest has an expanding, singing feeling that’s almost enough to blot out how much she’s missing her mother.

  The walk, from North Bridge to Bank Street, is quick but it’s through the busy heart of the city; the Royal Mile is always crowded with sightseers. Bagpipe music is drifting across from a busker; a serious-looking pair of tourists are poring over a map. Seb dodges them, stepping Ailsa onto the road and then back to the pavement.

  ‘I suppose it will be busier,’ he says, ‘when the Fringe starts?’

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ Ailsa says. ‘It’s fun, though.’ Last year, she was staggering from grief for Lennox to admitting that her own heart was failing, and the Fringe had been a sudden burst of colour in her grey world. The weather was beautiful. Her friends had got her out of hospital for a couple of hours here and there: Emily had taken her to some comedy, she and Christa had sat outside the World’s End pub, drinking lemonade and watching the world go by. At the time she had thought these were her last good days.

  When they turn down towards the coffee shop, she hesitates, and he turns back towards her. ‘You’re all right too, you know,’ she says.

  ‘I’m glad,’ he says, and he tilts up her chin and kisses her, lightly, on her temple, the tip of her nose, her cheek, her lips, then holds her close. The last time he kissed her in the street doesn’t bear thinking about: it was the night that they’d been dancing, in London, and she panicked and sent him away. How things change. She presses her cross-kissed face into his jacket, and feels the pressure of his arms around her increase in response.

  ‘Can I come in for a coffee?’ Seb asks. ‘I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll sit quietly in the corner and read Shakespeare.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ailsa says. Now that novelty of Seb has worn off, none of her co-workers remark on him; plus, Full of Beans has become a regular haunt of a couple of novelists and a singer, so the staff is doing its best to take celebrity customers in its stride, trying for a blasé, oh-is-that-Sebastian- Morley-I-didn’t-notice vibe.

  And then she looks through the window and sees her mother, sitting at one of the corner tables, with a pencil in her hand and a folded newspaper in front of her. She’ll be doing a crossword. It’s a long time since they’ve done one together. It’s strange, what you miss.

  ‘My mother is here.’

  Seb puts his hand against the glass, scans the cafe. ‘Oh, I see her. In the corner, right? Yellow scarf? She looks like you. Well, you look like her.’

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen her since she told me the whole story about my father.’ They’ve spoken, texted, but neither has suggested a meeting.

  ‘It’s good that she’s here, then?’ says Seb.

  ‘I suppose,’ Ailsa says, takes a breath, and pushes the door open.

  Hayley looks up at the sound of the door and gets to her feet. ‘Ailsa.’ They are standing two feet from each other. It seems they have forgotten how to embrace.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ Ailsa says. ‘I start work in ten minutes. I can’t really –’ She can’t really complete the sentence. ‘I can’t really rerun the blog argument again with you or tell you how upset I am that you didn’t tell me the truth or start to talk about how I miss you.’

  ‘That’s OK, hen,’ Hayley says, and there’s a look on her face that says she understands that Ailsa’s hurt, even as she’s hurting. It’s enough for Ailsa to close the physical gap between them, at least, step into her mother’s arms and feel the comfort of her familiar shape. ‘Tamsin’s over here, seeing a dealer, so I thought I’d come and say hello. I just wanted to see you. See that you’re OK.’ Hayley has stepped back now and Ailsa knows that she’s checking her skin tone for blueness, the shape of her face for weight loss or gain. She ought to mind. She doesn’t. This time next week, she’ll have met her father, and she can call Hayley and they can start over. She ignores Apple’s whispered suggestion that she could change all this right now.

  ‘Seb’s with me,’ she says.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Ms Rae.’ Ailsa glances up at him and sees he has the sense not to be wearing his hundred-watt smile. He looks serious, sober.

  ‘Hello,’ Hayley says.

  ‘May I join you?’

  ‘You’re welcome to,’ Hayley says, ‘and you can call me Hayley. But I’ll not be charmed.’

  Seb takes off his shades and pulls out the other chair at the corner table. ‘That’s fine with me. I’ve no intention of charming you.’

  Oh, well played, Seb, Ailsa thinks, and she reaches out to touch his arm, smiles at them both, then goes to put her apron on and start work.

  The Sun

  22nd July 2018

  The Real Romeo and Juliet?

  Sharp-eyed Sun celeb-spotters spied sexy Sebastian Morley in Edinburgh last week, where he’s rehearsing for his role as Romeo. But the lady who’s captured his heart isn’t his co-star, willowy Meredith Katz.

  Seb was seen out and about with the curvy mystery dance partner we spotted him with earlier this year.

  She might have lost a pound or two since then but she hasn’t lost her hold on Seb’s heart. The pair laughed as they left the Northbridge Brasserie with their arms around each other. They were later spotted kissing on a street corner. We’ve always thought Seb was a player – but maybe he’s been looking for a girl who’s larger-than-life.

  Seb was thought to be dating his StarDance partner Fenella Albright before leaving the show last year. But the pair, who had steamy chemistry on the dance floor, haven’t been seen in public together since shortly after his surgery. Could it be that Fenella needs to fatten up if she wants to catch Seb’s eye?

  22 July, 2017

  This Time Last Year

  Ailsa and Hayley go to the Scottish Borders, in the end, the blog vote being 43 per cent south, 23 per cent
north and 34 per cent west. Although they had ruled out east because there wasn’t anywhere new before you hit the sea, they still find that they can’t really bear to travel far: it feels reckless, and Ailsa is so very tired that the thought of any journey further than a couple of hours feels unbearable. Tamsin drives them there, Emily will collect them after three days, and Hayley gets a briefing on drips and dressings that she puts up with even though she knows everything there is to know about her daughter’s regime. The duty sister, waving them off the ward, tells them that this time next year they’ll probably be in Tenerife. Ailsa, exhausted by the effort of getting up and dressed, can think of nothing worse. She’d already rather be back in bed.

  But it’s worth it. Oh, it’s worth it. The hotel is a castle; they have a suite, in a turret, the light bright and strong but the curtains thick and heavily lined, so they both sleep better than they have in months.

  They have room service, because they have had enough sympathetic and curious looks to last them a lifetime, even a long one. In the year’s longest days, after slow walks around the grounds and lazy afternoons in the spa, they sit at the dining table in their turret window and eat meals that taste better than anything either of them has eaten in a long time.

  On their last evening, they are looking out over the hills, heathery and muted, dotted with sheep, the roads crawling with slow white caravans as the rest of the world goes on holiday, and even though Ailsa has been determined to keep hoping, and looking forward, now that there’s less and less future, her mind cannot help but go back. Lennox’s death is still a raw bitter edge that catches every time her failing heart beats; she knows that this is what her mother is facing. And as for her –

  ‘I’m frightened, Mum,’ she says. She didn’t realise the words were going to come out until she says them. Sometimes it seems that her heart has already resigned from her body and doesn’t bother telling her things she ought to know.

  ‘I know, hen,’ Hayley says, then, with the sound of put-aside tears in her voice, ‘me too.’