The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

by Stephanie Butland

‘No worries, hen. It’s just like the old days. Without the’ – Hayley steps back, waves her hands in the direction of her chest, fists clenched – ‘paddles. Defibrillators.’

  A shudder, radiating out from Apple: Don’t.

  It’s been an unseasonably warm night, even for the end of July; the windows are open, and a warm breeze blows through the flat.

  ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘I had a sandwich at work.’

  ‘Bread? Things must be bad. And I can see you’ve been crying.’ Hayley sits down on the sofa, waits for Ailsa to settle with her head in her lap, the way she used to when she was ill. ‘Now, tell me all about it.’

  ‘What’s to tell? It’s definitely him. He didn’t deny it. He rang to warn me and sent me the video clip himself, and he left me a voicemail.’ Just the thought of it starts her tears again. It’s the indignity. She is the fat girl Seb danced with after he’d slagged off fat girls dancing, as though he was making a point, or taking a holiday while he was, briefly, less-than-perfect himself. When he’s well, he’ll go sparkling away with a new dance partner, tight-arsed and prancing like a – like a shiny unicorn – and even if he does think that he loves her, well, she doesn’t want to be some sort of step down for him.

  Hayley hands her a tissue. ‘Come on, hen. We’ve got through worse than this. What did he say?’

  Ailsa sits up, wipes her eyes and puts her hand to her chest: she has, appropriately enough, heartburn. The bread, probably. Though Apple feels cold and tired, her beat subdued. She takes a deep breath and waits for her breathing to come in waves rather than hailstones.

  ‘He said he was stupid. Excited. He wasn’t thinking. He said he felt like everyone else was better than him and it was his way of making himself feel better.’

  Hayley says, ‘Aye, well.’

  ‘Aye, well? What does that mean?’

  ‘Well,’ Hayley says, ‘everybody’s an idiot once in a while.’

  ‘What?’ David wasn’t what he might have been. Seb isn’t what he pretended to be. Hayley can’t do this to her too. ‘Why aren’t you telling me all men are bastards? Or that you told me so?’

  ‘Would that help?’

  Ailsa shakes her head, as though that might wake her up, or dislodge whatever it is in her ear that’s making her not hear things properly. ‘That’s what you do. And you said—’

  ‘What I said,’ Hayley says, ‘was, dinnae be a WAG. And you’re not. I should have known you knew better.’ A pause. ‘You’re not the only one with a sorry to say.’

  Ailsa nods and reaches out for her mother. ‘But you were right. You said Seb was a charmer.’

  ‘And he is. But, like you said, I’m not exactly a good judge of men.’ There’s a pointedness in Hayley’s voice, but not a lot of it. It’s not as sharp as it should be. ‘And there’s worse things to be than charming.’

  ‘Like a man in a church hall in Guildford,’ Ailsa says.

  ‘Aye, well. To each his own.’ Oh, God. Ailsa has broken her mother. Why isn’t she raging? Looking at her daughter’s face, Hayley says, ‘Tamsin told me a thing or two. Including that I need tae turn down my lioness act.’

  Ailsa nods, but then the tears start again. ‘I like it when you’re a lioness.’

  ‘You’ll like it better when you’re a lioness for yourself, hen.’

  ‘I don’t feel like a lioness –’ She pauses ‘– before I rang you that day, I ran away. From – David.’

  ‘Did you? Or did you take control?’ Hayley asks.

  Ailsa shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’ Then, ‘What do I do about Seb?’

  ‘Do you have to do anything?’

  ‘No. Yes. I’ll see him at the theatre later. All his stuff’s here. He said he’d stay at Roz’s tonight. He’s coming to get his bag.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘He said he’d text a time –’ Ailsa looks at her phone ‘– about half three. Half an hour.’ Oh God, oh God, she can’t face him. She’s put the bag by the door already, but she’s going to have to hand it over. ‘I’ve got two missed calls from him. One from his agent. A couple from – papers, probably.’ A sob, unexpected and forceful, breaks free from the place beneath her ribs where Ailsa is keeping her tears. ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone.’

  ‘That’s best, I should think.’

  ‘What would I say?’ Another sob, another, another, and Hayley holds her until she’s calm. Maybe they’re both remembering when a problem with her heart was life or death. ‘Why aren’t you saying all men are bastards? Because I’d agree with you.’

  ‘He’s been an idiot. That’s a wee bit different.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re defending him.’

  ‘I’m not defending him, Ailsa, I’m really not. He made an arse of himself before he met you. People do that. That’s what they do. Other people forgive them. And you dinnae need me to tell you it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Because I really am a terrible mother if you do.’

  ‘The most important thing on my inside isn’t even mine.’

  ‘Well, if you’re talking about your heart, I don’t know who else you think it belongs to.’

  Ailsa puts her head in her hands. Her hair feels greasy at the roots. She wants a bath, sleep. She wants Seb. No, she doesn’t. But she has to go tonight. She’s committed. She’s part of a team. She’s not the star of the Failing Heart Show anymore.

  ‘I’m not going to be treated like that.’

  ‘No, you’re not. What does your name mean?’

  ‘Victory. Warrior.’ It’s hardly a war cry.

  Hayley looks at her daughter, strokes her hair. ‘Do you want some tea?’

  Ailsa shakes her head. ‘No. I’m going to have a bath.’

  ‘Do you want me to run it for you?’

  ‘Thanks, Mum. But – I’m not ill anymore.’

  ‘No, but that’s not to say your mother cannae run you a bath now and then.’

  And then the doorbell rings. Ailsa jumps, as though it’s connected to her by electrodes, and goes to the window, looks out, steps back as though the air outside is charged enough to give her a shock too.

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘Do you want me to answer it?’

  ‘I want him to go away.’

  Hayley looks at her, a long look; the kind that she and Lennox used to get, in their teens, when they said they were going to her room to listen to music. ‘I’ll tell him that, then.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ She’ll be a lioness later, when she has to be in the same room with him, has to ignore the looks of everyone who’s seen the video. Has to dance, because she is not an amateur, not in this show, not in this life, because she didn’t go through all that she went through to go at it half-arsed.

  *

  Outside the venue, on the street, Ailsa breathes the city air and wills herself to strength and calmness. She touches the place where the top of her scar is with her left hand, the bottom of it with her right, and feels how well she can mend. And then she’s through the bar, which is buzzing with theatre-goers who haven’t made their way upstairs yet. There are still forty-five minutes until the show begins. She signs in with Eliza, changes her shoes, and takes one of the seats with a kerchief tied around the back. Guy, at a kerchief-marked chair on the other side of the stage, gives her a wave and she waves back.

  Edie comes to speak to her, just a quiet, ‘Hello, how are you?’ and Ailsa feels her spine straighten, as it always does in response to one of the Gardiner sisters. She drops her shoulders, finds her centre, makes it solid and calm.

  And then, because she can only be really calm if she does the right thing, she heads for the curtained-off area that’s serving as wings and green room. There’s time. She has an idea that she’ll leave a note for Seb, but he’s there, with Mercutio, deep in conversation. When he sees her, his eyes light, and he excuses himself.

  ‘Ailsa.’ He says it cautiously, as though the saying of it might make her disappear.

  She shakes her head, quickly, as a w
ay of saying, ‘Don’t talk to me about it now.’

  ‘I don’t want to – interrupt you,’ she says, ‘but I wanted to say’ – she remembers just in time that she can’t say good luck, because it’s bad luck – ‘may the unicorns be with you.’

  He nods. ‘Thank you. Ailsa, let me explain . . .’

  There are tears waiting in her eyes. The shoes he gave her are on her feet. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t talk to him about it, not now. She can barely stand next to him, smelling his skin, remembering how she’s trusted him with her body, with Apple. She stands on tip-toe to kiss his cheek, and then she turns away, because to look into those eyes will hurt too much.

  *

  It begins exactly on time, as Roz had said it would. There’s a street-fight in the first scene where the dancers stamp, beat the tables, bellow the names of Montague or Capulet. Ailsa makes the woman sitting next to her jump and put her hand to her chest, and she feels a small sense of victory. She hears another voice behind her – Tom, maybe – snarl, and she tries a snarl herself, adding it to his, remembering to constrict her throat as she bares her teeth. And when the scene is over – the peace made, after a fashion – here is Seb. Or rather, Romeo. But he’s Seb, too, playing a part he’s scared of because he doesn’t have a choice now, making something real when it’s the last thing he wants to do. And instead of her heart shrinking, as she thought it might, it expands.

  Juliet isn’t sure about being married. And then Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio are heading for the party. Romeo has, he says, a soul of lead, while Mercutio has dancing shoes with nimble soles. Seb’s eyes catch on Ailsa’s as the audience laugh. And then the three actors sit, cross-legged, on three blocks they pull to the centre of the stage, so the audience cranes in to see, to hear.

  Ailsa had been especially captivated by this scene at dress rehearsal the other night, the liveliness and intensity of it; it made her think of the Edinburgh parks in summer, students in twos and threes, deep in talk and laughter, barely noticing the day move to evening. And – though she hasn’t seen a lot of theatre – she admires the way that Roz has put the three actors so they face away from everyone, excluding the audience, making them lean closer, wanting to know more. Seb sits in profile to her so she can see the shape of his forehead and nose against the light beyond, and looking at him hurts, but not as much as thinking about how heedlessly, how easily, he dismissed women like her, before he knew her. And though she knows life is more complicated than it looks from the sidelines, it still feels as though one of these Sebs is pretending.

  Before she knows it, it’s the cue for the dancers, and here she is, standing, moving, accepting Capulet’s outstretched hand and remembering that all she has to do is walk, walk, walk. The lights are brighter and the music louder than she’s used to; Apple shudders and dances within, pulsing with the beat of the music.

  This is living, Apple sings to her. This is what you do all of the other days for. Feel my life glow in you. You are not the audience anymore.

  From: Libby

  Sent: 3 August, 2018

  To: Ailsa

  Subject: Calendar

  Dear Ailsa,

  I hope you are well.

  I wanted to let you know that I’ve posted a calendar out to you. It looks great, and we’re very proud of it. But I know (from when they arrived with me) that the cover, which is a montage of photographs of Lennox, is a bit of a shock if you’re not prepared.

  Anything you can do to help us promote it we’d be grateful for.

  Very best,

  Libby

  From: Ailsa

  Sent: 4 August, 2018

  To: Libby

  Subject: Re: Calendar

  Dear Libby,

  Thank you – for the calendar and the warning. You were right on both counts. The calendar is really lovely, and seeing Lennox in all those photos made me feel – well, all the things we feel when we lose someone. I’ll never forget him; not just because he was my first boyfriend, and for the time we spent together at the end, but because I don’t think I’d be the person I am now without him. This time last year I was still so angry with him for dying, and for leaving me to face my own death alone. Now I’m grateful that I had him as part of my life.

  I’ll put a blog post up in the next couple of days, and I’m giving my copy of the calendar to my mum when I see her at the weekend.

  Love to you and the family,

  Ailsa x

  thescotsman.com

  4 August, 2018

  Long Live Romeo and Juliet

  ‘Sell a kidney if you have to, just get a ticket!’ declared ecstatic Twitter user @shakespeareordie after the opening of Roz Derbyshire’s eagerly awaited Fringe production of Romeo and Juliet at The Dragon’s Nest in Newington last week. That tweet may have been a little extreme – but theatre critics and the public have been unanimous in their praise for the show, set in a Verona that’s somewhere between a mafia hangout and a sultry Buenos Aries. This critic is no different.

  The Edinburgh heatwave, which has actors and audience alike all aglow, probably helps, as does the simple staging of Derbyshire’s production. The power of this so-often overdone tale of star-crossed lovers is here a tale told through touch and look, through eye and tongue. The actors are, to a man and woman, a pitch-perfect company, resisting melodrama for pathos, and in doing so they make this story into one about every one of us.

  Cynics may have been forgiven for thinking that the leads, Sebastian Morley and Meredith Katz, were chosen more for their looks and their audience-pulling-power than they were for their acting skill. But both are sublime. Katz, who has a reputation for coldness both on and off set, is coltish and serious as a preoccupied Juliet, solemn and almost feverish in her love and the death-wish that comes with it. Morley, who was runner-up for the part in the TV reality show that launched his career, shows that the judges on Wherefore Art Thou? were correct when they considered him too young for the part. The intervening decade has given him a gravitas that audiences have not seen from him before. He is syllable perfect, in intonation and in depth, and he moves like a man weighed down already by what he seems to know is coming.

  Both are supported by a cast of warm and considered performances. There’s barely a wrong note, though some of the doubling is confusing, especially as this is so clearly a no-money, no-frills production, with the cast all wearing jeans and plain shirts throughout, with only a kerchief to mark them Montague or Capulet, a cross for the Friar and a sash for the Prince. The only variation is the scene of the revels at the Capulet house, when the cast don identical black eye-masks, and the women wear tango shoes.

  And here we come to the other much-vaunted aspect of this show: the tango. Here the local Edinburgh Dance Club do the play proud, joining in the dance with confidence. They certainly aren’t ready for StarDance but that isn’t the point: the fact that there are slightly too many people on the stage, the noise of movement and the disrupted sightlines create a sense of reality rarely seen in a stage production. We can see how Romeo would need to dodge for a sight of Juliet how the Capulets struggle to make him out, and how he can manage to kiss Juliet unnoticed.

  All in all, Derbyshire’s confidence and verve shine bright.

  11 August, 2018

  ‘I’ve Lennox’s calendar here,’ Ailsa says.

  ‘Ruthie mentioned that it was nearly ready when I saw her last,’ Hayley says, rousing herself to a slightly more upright position from her sofa slouch. It’s a hot Sunday, and they are taking it easy before Emily comes to join them, and then they’ll all go to the show. The cotton scarf that Hayley has with her instead of a jacket is new, and has a cheerful yellow pompom trim. It makes Ailsa happy/sad that she’s never seen it before today.

  They sit side by side and examine the cover: so many Lennoxes. Ailsa has looked at it often since it arrived almost a week ago, but still gets a shock/stab when faced with such clear reminders of his life/death. She’d almost posted it to Hayley, but couldn’t quit
e let it out of her possession, so she’d told herself it was best that they look at it together.

  The marathon-finishing photo is here, and one from a gap year trek; here he is, cropped from a school photo, the mop-headed smiler Ailsa first met. Those bright blue eyes never faded, and his face stayed rounded into adulthood, even though as he grew older his body turned lean and taut with all of the sport he played and miles he ran. There’s a photo of him holding baby Louisa, one of him graduating, one of him in a suit. It’s hard to see so many versions of his face; harder to accept that there won’t be any more. Impossible to admit that it’s getting harder to carry the memory of how he looked, as time goes on.

  ‘Aye,’ Hayley says, shaking her head, ‘he was a good lad. It’s not right.’

  And then she starts to turn over the pages. January is an older woman with a purple bob, whose sign says, ‘GRATEFUL’. Ailsa is February. She looks happy and healthy, flesh-coloured flesh rather than blue-grey. The red lipstick that she wiped away afterwards looks lovely.

  ‘Oh,’ Hayley says when she sees it. ‘Oh, Ailsa. You look – you look alive.’

  Ailsa nods. It’s strange, to be in Lennox’s calendar, her face caught at the moment where Seb came out into the garden and blew a kiss to her. Whenever she looks at the photo, she feels – complicated, because what she is looking at is both true and not true. It’s her, and it isn’t. Or maybe it’s a version of herself that she doesn’t recognise, because it’s not the one she thought she’d be, once Apple arrived with her promise of 100 per cent life. She keeps on turning the pages. Seb, in July, is laughing, bright, his trilby pushed back and the green of his eyes almost glowing against the background of his clear skin and the shadow cast by the tree behind him. Ailsa looks away.

  ‘Have you talked to him?’

  ‘Yes. No,’ Ailsa says. ‘I see him at the show.’ When she’s not with him she can almost talk herself into understanding how easily the whole thing came about. But when she sees him, his ridiculous handsomeness, the way he is a perfect match for Meredith, it makes sense that he would mock a fat girl dancing. On the nights when she’s been scheduled to take part in the show, she’s avoided looking in his direction when the dancers have got to their feet. There’s always been an eagerness for Seb’s hand, anyway. And Ailsa has brought her feelings to the dance each time, her tango sad and furious, hurting. Roz has praised her performance. If only she knew.