I knock several times, listen…then open the door. The familiar waxy smell of stage make-up and hairspray wafts out – as does what sounds like a very loud swear word disguised as a cough. There’s a scuffling noise and there, sitting in a revolving chair in front of a row of mirrors framed by white bulbs, is George.
“Hellooooooo!” The chair spins him away from me, then back again, then away, then back…
I wait for him to stop spinning.
“Hi, George. Why are you holding that hairbrush like that?”
“Like what?” He tries to stuff the hairbrush down the back of the chair so I won’t realize that he’s been singing into it – and forgets there’s a gap in the chair back. The hairbrush drops to the floor with a clatter and rolls over to my feet. We both look at it. “Never mind. Anyway, why are you holding a hammer?”
I look at the hammer. I’d actually forgotten I still had it – was I supposed to give it back to Amy or leave it in the workshop or…?
“Never mind.” I check the room for somewhere inconspicuous I could leave it, but there’s nothing inconspicuous about a whacking great hammer in the middle of all the mic tape, wig pins and sponges, so I give up and shove it into my rucksack as best I can. “It’s Amy’s, and if she passes me something I just kind of…take it?”
This is good enough for George. “Look at this place, Hope. Look at it!” He leaps out of the chair and bounds forward, throwing his arms around me in a quick hug. “Just look at this!” He grabs the top folder from a pile of paperwork by the mirror and flicks it open. Pages of make-up reference sketches – blush, eyeliner, special-effect placements like latex or wax – flip past, along with A4 photos of make-upless cast members. I see a flash of blue below blond hair and my heart jumps – I almost rip the folder out of his hands. Meanwhile he’s chattering about the make-up trial run he’s helping Nathalie with tomorrow, and what wigs he’s looking after and how they’ve asked him to help assemble the costumes. He grabs a rolling rack and wheels it out from its spot against the wall. It’s filled with identical garment bags, each one labelled for their actor and character. There at the front is TOMMY: JAMIE (1). Behind it is another hanger and bag marked LUKE: JAMIE (1).
Luke’s costume.
Luke.
Luke on the stage, leaning in to Juliet…
“You’ve gone all flushed again. You keep doing that, you know.” He shoves the rack back into its space with a rattle.
“Me? Oh, sure. It’s a bit…stuffy in here, that’s all.” I pull at the neck of my top for emphasis and concentrate on a bag further back: JULIET: LIZZIE (3). It looks like Lizzie’s torn coat from the end of Act One. No danger there. Not for me, anyway.
George arches an eyebrow at me. “I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”
“Tell anyone what?”
“If you wanted to just be a bit excited.” He starts stroking the first Tommy garment bag. It’s a little creepy. And I know as well as he does that’s not what he actually means.
“I am excited. I just wear my excitement on the inside. Unlike some of us.”
George sniffs loudly and turns away to pick up his hairbrush.
I leave him where he’s happiest, singing along to the radio, and find my way past the dressing rooms, through the maze of stairwells and passageways in the back half of the Earl’s: upstairs, downstairs, out to the loading dock and back again. It’s an old building that has had extensions built onto its extensions over the last two hundred years, and nothing leads quite where you expect it to. No wonder they wanted me to get used to finding my way around. The corridors are lined with framed programmes from productions that have been staged here: plays, musicals, ballets, every kind of show. At regular intervals, there are photos mounted on the walls too – pictures from rehearsals or first nights, curtain calls with the boards strewn with flowers; shots of whole companies collected on the stage, their arms around each other’s shoulders and broad smiles on their faces. Being here, being this, is being part of something bigger.
I push through wide doors, narrow doors and double doors – and suddenly find myself front of house several floors up, outside the Scott private bar in the upstairs foyer. The main staircase twists its way down in a wide square in front of me, the sounds of voices drifting up from the dress circle bar two floors below, where they’re holding the press reception Rick mentioned. I lean on the gleaming wooden banister rail and listen to the chatter, following the lines of little white bulbs strung onto silk-wrapped wires that dangle straight down the centre of the stairwell – the famous “Earl’s chandelier”. Every bulb is in a tiny metal cage, hanging there, just out of reach.
I look down over the rail, my eyes following the red cables all the way to the red-carpeted floor of the main lobby and there, right in the centre, is a familiar figure. I don’t understand why he’s there at first – but of course, he works here when he’s not acting too, doesn’t he? There’s not exactly much rehearsing going on today, not with the get-in. He’s not wearing his usual jeans and T-shirt, but what must be his theatre front-of-house uniform: a black waistcoat and trousers, and a black tie. His hair is combed back away from his face, his hands folded together behind his back.
And suddenly, he looks up.
Right at me.
The whole staircase shifts beneath me. The whole building shifts – stage and stalls, dressing rooms and bars – and I find myself curling my fingers around the rail, holding onto it as though it will keep me from falling all the way down into his eyes. The lights in their little gold cages are blinding tiny suns and I can feel the heat from every single one of them. They’re so bright…
I blink and shake my head like that’s going to help.
He looked up; I saw him.
And he saw me.
But when I look back down to the foyer, he’s gone.
Amy, when I finally track her down again, is pacing up and down the middle of the stage and having a heated phone conversation about…something, with…somebody. And while I’d love to get closer and listen in, my survival instinct is stronger than my curiosity. She paces some more, and pinches the bridge of her nose as she listens, tipping her head back to stare at the roof. The dividing line between auditorium and backstage, the exact point between performance and private space, runs directly above my head. One side, the auditorium side, is gold and white and decorative plaster. The other – the stage side – is black and white and metal: the grid of bars that fly backdrops and scenery up and down from the tower, the lighting rigs with their spots bolted on. From here, even the curtain looks different – all I can see of it, high above me, is a dangling line of gold fringing. It looks like some kind of sea monster floating by on a current.
Sighing, Amy finishes her call and drops her phone into one of her seventy-odd pockets.
“I’m glad you’re here – could you take a look at the crew timesheets for me? I’ve got a nasty feeling we’ll go into overtime, and there’s always a couple of them who forget to mark their hours at the end.”
The timesheets? I try to hide the look of panic that must, surely, be obvious on my face. Signing people in and out is one thing, but this is people’s actual pay. Something I’ve never dealt with before. She notices me looking stricken and adds: “It’s part of the job, I’m afraid. They’re in a folder on my desk. Roly will help you – you’ll need to cross-check with her, and you can let her know about lunch while you’re there.”
Somewhere, deep in her pockets, her phone starts ringing again and she strides off into the darkness at the other side of the stage.
“Hello?”
The corridor to the production office, down on the lowest level of the building, is bare concrete lit by a series of strip lights that would turn even the healthiest tan grey. But this is the corridor I remember so vividly that, when I finally push the door open, I half-expect to see a little girl with frizzy hair, wearing her favourite dress and shoes and sitting in a chair in the corner. But she isn’t there, because she’s me.
I nudge the tray back against the wall and sit in the desk chair – giving it a quick spin because it looked kind of fun when George did it – and set to work rummaging through piles of neatly stacked papers for everybody’s timesheets. Everything is eerily quiet. I try very hard not to, but I can’t help remembering the story about the theatre’s ghost. All theatres supposedly have ghosts, and here it’s meant to be the spirit of a former general manager who likes to check everything’s running to plan. She rearranges paperwork, turns off lights and resets any script on the prompt desk to the front page – but she’s supposed to smell like flowers and all I can smell right now is damp plaster, so I’m probably on my own.
Having found what looks like all the timesheets, I push the chair away from the desk and spin it right across the room, bumping against the shelf on the far side. The scale model theatre sitting there rattles, and something falls over on the stage: a tiny but elaborately decorated miniature Piecekeeper throne, just like the drawing on the wall in the workshop.
Just by being there, the model theatre makes me feel more at home, more sure of myself – it’s so like the one I have in my room. Carefully, I reach into the theatre box and pick the throne up, setting it back in the middle of the miniature stage. Better. Something fidgets at the base of my spine, because tucked into the edge of the box, prompt-side in the wings, there’s a little scale figure looking out at the stage – just like I would be. Maybe it’s only a coincidence, but it feels like a welcome present from the theatre.
With every step I take along the corridors, I keep expecting someone to shout at me; to ask what the hell I think I’m doing or who I am and where I’m going… But it never happens. Anyway, I guess all I’d need to do is tell them I’m meant to be here. Who knows – if I keep telling myself that, I might even start really believing it.
The maze of corridors and stairs and doors feels like it goes on for ever, but at last I end up at the bottom of yet another flight of stairs. The noises of the theatre get louder fast as I go up them…and when I come to a door closing off the top of the stairs, I can feel the crashes and thuds on the far side of it. I thought this was a shortcut back up from the office – but it doesn’t sound like I’m where I thought I’d be.
Carefully, I open the door and peer out.
A giant stone urn is hurtling towards me from the other side of the stage.
“Watch out, love!”
I pull my head back into the safety of the stairwell, and slam the door shut.
Someone shouts something on the other side, and I’m glad the door’s thick enough to muffle their actual words. My phone, buried in my pocket, realizes it suddently has reception and pings at me. It’s a voicemail…from Mum. From ten minutes ago. Uh-oh.
Perhaps if I can get up to the walkway above the stage, it’ll be quieter?
I try again, making a break for it, deeper into the wings towards the steep ladder to the fly-floor. Tucking the timesheets behind a cardboard box at the bottom of the ladder, I swing myself onto the first rung and climb.
I fumble with my phone.
“Hey, sorry. I didn’t have reception – you called me?”
“So you can bear to speak to your mother!” She sounds odd – like she’s a long way from the phone. Or…she’s outdoors.
“I’m just a bit busy today, that’s all.”
“I know, I know. I’m teasing you, darling.”
Loud hooting in the background.
“Are you out?”
“Hmmm?”
A cold puddle forms in the pit of my stomach. Mum’s out and about – and she calls me? I know my mother, and this can’t be good.
“I’m just running into town on a couple of errands and as I’m passing I thought I’d pop in and—”
“No!” My voice is loud enough to echo around the fly-floor. Below me, everything stops as the crew look around for whoever just shouted – and why. But thankfully none of them even think about checking up on the intern standing on the fly-floor. They give a collective shrug and return to what they were doing. I lean back against the ladder and close my eyes. My mum is on her way to the Square Globe, where she is expecting to find her daughter working in the marketing office.
My mum is about to be:
a) disappointed, because I’ve lied to her and I’m not there,
b) confused, because I’ve lied to her and I’m not there,
c) furious, because I’ve lied to her and I’m not there,
d) all of the above. Because lying. Not there.
Unless, that is, I can stop her.
What is it the actors always say? Find an element of truth in every role, no matter how small? Okay. Small truth time.
I open my eyes. “No – there’s no point. I’m not there.”
“You’re not there?”
“No.”
“Well, where are you then?”
“I’m…” (In the loo. In a shop. In a storage unit. In Spain…?) “I’m picking some stuff up for the office. From the printer’s. Because that’s where I am. At the printer’s.” I gulp down panic. “Yes. There was a bunch of…of leaflets and they came out all wrong so I said I’d take care of it and that’s what I’m doing right now which is why I’m not at the theatre and there’s no point you coming by because I won’t be back for ages and I know you’re busy and—”
“Hope?”
“Yes.”
“Breathe, dear. I’ve told you before – don’t run all your words together. It makes you terribly difficult to understand. So I take it you don’t want me to come and see you?”
“No, it’s not that. I promise. I’m just…not there.”
(Which is true. I guess this does work.)
Unfortunately, I forgot that I was talking to my mother, because suddenly: “Which printer is it? I thought they did all their printing in-house?”
“It’s a new thing. New printer, I mean. For programmes. This is basically a trial run and—”
Somewhere below me there’s a crash as a trolley runs into a wall, and I desperately hope it doesn’t carry down the phone line. Luckily for me, Mum seems too preoccupied with the printer idea to notice.
“Are they any good? I’ve been thinking about getting some new business cards made up – what did you say they were called?”
I didn’t. Because I made them up, didn’t I? It seemed like such a good idea at the time…
“Uhh…” Frantically, I look around me for inspiration. “Wall and…grid…ly? Yes. Wall and Gridley.”
“Wall and Gridley?”
“Yup. Mmm-hmm. They’re new.”
“I see. Well, let me know if they’re…oh, sorry, darling. My other line’s going, and it’s probably the Oliviers again.”
“Okay. Yep. Sure, no problem. You go. Love you – bye!” I jab the disconnect button on my phone before she has a chance to say anything else, then lean my head back against the wall and listen to the pounding of my heart. Because that was close.
I’ve never been on a fly-floor before. The Square Globe doesn’t have a proper grid or a fly tower for the crew to bring backdrops down from – not surprising, as it has a grand total of five ropes, and it’s usually Orson working them all in between doing his science homework. This, though, is a whole different ball game, and standing here feels a little like I’ve climbed inside an enormous piano. Dozens and dozens of ropes are tightly stretched over the side wall of the theatre, disappearing straight up into the tower or down the wall below me, their counterweights stacked in neat piles in their cradles.
“Wow.”
It’s exactly like being inside an enormous piano. Or maybe a bell tower.
I stand there and stare at them, and it’s just me and the ropes. If I touched them, they would sing. How could they not?
I’m barely aware of my hand moving, reaching for the nearest…
“Oi!”
A strange voice snaps me out of my trance, and I drop my hand. Glaring at me from the other end of the fly-floor is a guy in a black T-shirt and jeans, his arms folded across his chest and a pair of thick gloves tucked into his belt.
“Sorry, I was… I’m Hope. I’m one of the interns. Sorry. Rick told me to look around…” I manage to shut myself up before I’m allowed to be here, honest! comes out and completely and eternally blows any hope I might have of appearing professional.
His face relaxes. “You’re the intern?”
I’m not quite sure how to take this, so I settle for nodding.
“Fair enough.” His head moves in something that’s half-nod and half-shake. I get the feeling he’s examining me. “First day in the theatre?”
“Here? Yes. I’ve been at the Square Globe, and I’ve been in the rehearsal room…” I tail off. “Is it that obvious?”
He laughs, and this time it’s definitely a nod. “You’ll get the hang of it soon enough. First lesson of the fly-floor? Don’t touch the ropes unless someone’s told you to.”
I’m not sure whether I’m in trouble. It wasn’t like I was going to do anything with them – I’m not that daft…
Theatrical Page 10