Theatrical

by Maggie Harcourt

  Leaning back against the desk, she looks me up and down.

  “Now, where are we…oh, yes. We’ve got a couple of scenes Rick wants to run – they’re on your schedule for today and tomorrow – and that illusion with the paintings is going to be the death of me. I think it might be the trapdoor that’s doing it now – I’ll take you down there with me so we can have a look. End of tomorrow is the prop and wardrobe parade. Most of the cast are working with their final props now, but we’ve still got a couple of temporary ones in play – everything’s in the blue crates in the wings, if you could set up the prop table?”

  I smile and nod and I think I’m making my face look normal – but inside, every word she says is like a hammer hitting an enormous bell. I thought I was just about doing okay. I thought I had it…I thought I was making friends, getting along… But then she warns me off Luke, and now I have to keep track of a necklace…and what if I can’t? It’s so different from the Square Globe, where I could do everything with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. Here, I feel like I need seventeen extra eyes and at least another twelve hands. What if I’m not as good as I thought, as good as I need to be?

  My head feels too small to hold everything she’s told me as I walk out of the office, so it takes me a minute and I’m already out in the corridor when I realize what I saw in there.

  I need to go back.

  I turn, and duck back inside; Amy’s already on the phone to someone and barely acknowledges the fact I’ve walked in.

  No, what I want is over there…

  The black box theatre model is exactly where it was before, tucked back on the corner desk.

  And it’s different.

  Someone has changed it.

  Instead of the little throne and someone watching from the wings, there are two little cardboard figures sitting at the very front of the stage. Just like…

  I peer closer at them – they’re rough and a bit scrappy, like they were made in a hurry and torn as much as they were cut out, but even so I can tell what I’m looking at. Two figures, side by side on the miniature stage. And one of them is wearing a beanie hat.

  “No, it’s still not right. Can we take it from the sound cue again, please?”

  Rick runs his hands back and forth through his hair, like scratching at his scalp is going to fix the “vanishing painting” illusion happening onstage.

  Or failing to happen.

  I think everyone was hoping that when we got into the theatre and the actors were doing the trick on the stage with all the proper sight lines and the actual trapdoor underneath them (instead of a square of tape on the rehearsal room floor) it would all come together. But Tuesday’s rolled around, opening night minus four, and it still hasn’t, and it isn’t, and no matter how hard everybody tries, the vanishing painting just won’t. It is the least magical painting in the history of magic or paintings – and worse still, it seems to be not-vanishing in a completely new and exciting way every time the trick doesn’t work. Either one of the actors moves at the wrong time, or the trapdoor sticks when it’s opening (or closing or occasionally both), or – my personal favourite – they all somehow manage to drop the frame and the audience gets a perfect view of the painting still onstage and falling in slow-motion to land on its face with an almighty great bang.

  Standing in the very front of the stalls and resting her arms on the apron of the stage, our stage magician Katie Khan frowns, then waves away the dust kicked up by the painting. Katie is to stage illusions what Miriam Parker is to wardrobe: the best. And she’s come in specifically to make our stubbornly non-vanishing painting behave.

  There’s a long, thoughtful silence. Even the wings behind me are quiet – although that just makes it easier to hear when Amy, sitting with the creative team in the stalls, sighs and hisses, “I’m telling you, it’s the trap!” into Nina’s ear. Everyone else waits while Katie climbs up onto the stage and circles the scene; first going left, then right, then finally dropping to her knees behind Dom, smoothing her hands across the edges of the trapdoor and peering around the huddled knot of actors.

  “I think it might be the trap, you know,” she calls down to the stalls, and Amy makes a sort of growling noise.

  “I knew it. But does anybody around here listen?” She’s through the pass door between the auditorium and backstage and into the wings in an instant, rummaging through the toolbox under the props table and sending screwdrivers and pliers clattering onto the floor… And then she stops and turns her head to fix her gaze right on me.

  “Hope.”

  Meep.

  “Have you still got that hammer?”

  Hammer?

  Hammer!

  “Yes! Yes! I do! I have the hammer!” I dig it out of my bag, where it has become a permanent part of my stage management kit, and brandish it with the kind of enthusiasm that usually gets people locked up.

  “Great. With me.”

  In three strides, she’s across the edge of the wings, onto the stage and has dropped through the trapdoor in the middle of the boards.

  “Hope!” Her voice drifts up from somewhere under my feet.

  “Yes. Right. Coming.”

  So I follow to the edge of the hole in the stage and peer down – only to see Amy and two of the stage crew looking right back up at me from the wooden platform below. It makes the drop a lot less than I thought, but still, it’s a bit more than just a step down.

  Seeing me hesitate, Amy holds up a hand, and I’m about to reach for it when she says, “You can just pass the hammer down to me if you prefer?”

  Oh.

  “No, no. I’m fine.” I jump down onto the platform – and the trap slams shut after me. Muttering under her breath, Amy runs a hand across the mechanism, then pokes at the edge of the door a couple of times…and then takes an almighty great swing at it with the hammer. There’s an earsplitting CLANG, a crunch…and the sound of one piece of wood dropping into a slot in another.

  “Try it now?” she calls, dropping her hand.

  The trap slides silently, smoothly open and then glides shut again, sealing with barely a click.

  Not that I care, because all of a sudden it feels like the air has been sucked out of the little room beneath the stage. Every sound above us is muffled now, and all of them are unimportant, except for one – the voice I can hear directly above me.

  That’s Luke.

  Luke is on the stage right over my head.

  “Are you coming?” Amy’s words sound like they come from another room. And I know she’s waiting for me and expecting me to follow her, and I should…but it’s like my feet have been nailed in place.

  A board above me creaks.

  He’s up there.

  After Amy’s warning yesterday morning, I’ve tried to stay away from Luke. Not “avoid” him, exactly – more “avoid being in the same space where we could potentially be alone together”, which is harder than I expected. Not just because the back of the Earl’s is a warren, full of tucked-away corners and sharp turns in corridors – but because it feels like he could pop out of any doorway, appear on any staircase at any time. This whole building feels like him. Or a part of him anyway. So being here but trying to keep my distance, keep my head down, keep focused like Amy said…it’s like being pulled in two different directions at once. I even made a point of taking a bunch of schedules that needed updating down to the production office when I heard Rick say they were going to run through Luke’s Lancelot scene.

  “I’ll be there – unless…you don’t want me to be?”

  That’s what I said, wasn’t it? That I’d be there.

  And then I wasn’t.

  But now, he’s up there. On the stage. And I’m here…

  I can barely get my voice louder than a whisper. “I’ll be right there. I just want to…”

  I mumble something about wanting to wait and have another look at the trap, and a moment later I hear the main door shut behind Amy.

  I stretch up my ar
m and place the flat of my palm on the boards above me, resting there. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can feel the vibration of Luke’s voice as he talks to someone up above, reverberating down through the stage; through the tips of my fingers.

  I hold my breath, listening for footsteps in the corridor in case Amy doubles back to fetch me, but the only movement I hear is Luke’s above. He’s up there, almost so close I can touch him.

  Through the boards his voice is strong and confident. It’s so different from the quiet warmth of when he speaks to me – I wonder if Rick’s got him running a line?

  Nobody could tell me off for being in the wings to watch – after all, I’ve just come from there, haven’t I?

  I have to see – if I run, I might just catch it.

  I jump down from the platform and head for the door, throwing it open and…

  “Well, hello there!”

  George is standing right outside the door. A small, high-pitched yelp forces its way out of me before I can clamp a hand over my mouth and stop it. All George does is grin. “Been busy, have we?”

  “George, what the hell are you doing?”

  He dodges the slap I aim at his arm and laughs. “Me? Hang on – I wasn’t the one gazing adoringly at a ceiling.”

  “I was…checking the trapdoor. Obviously.”

  “Checking the trap. Of course. I saw Amy come out and thought I’d wait for you, but when you didn’t come with her, I stuck my head around the door to check if you’d already gone.” He winks at me, then adds: “You know if you want to see him, you stand a much better chance if you’re in the actual auditorium, don’t you?”

  I snort a little too loudly. “That is crazy talk. I was…it’s just…”

  I have no script.

  Help.

  Just when I start to think he’s enjoying this a little too much, George puts me out of my misery. “So, Luke. Going for the older man. Nice.”

  There are two options here: either I pretend I haven’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about, or I skip the denials and assume that George can see straight through me.

  I’ve never been a very good actor.

  “He’s not that much older. He’s only a first-year student, and it’s not like he’s…Tommy’s age or something.” I lower my voice to a stage-whisper. “But can you not make it into a thing – please? Amy’s already given me a lecture about mixing personal and professional and getting distracted.”

  “Oh, please.” George waves a hand at me as we turn the corner of the corridor ahead of wardrobe. “Like half the cast aren’t busy mixing ‘personal’ and ‘professional’. I tell you, the things you see when you work in wardrobe…” He stops mid-thought and grabs my elbow. “Oh my god, that reminds me. Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Who’s coming in to help with the costume parade later! Only Miriam actual Parker! Miriam Parker! I get to work with Miriam Parker – well, not work with exactly, but…”

  Everything else he says fades behind a high-pitched static howl. My ears feel like someone’s let off a firework inside them, while somebody else pours a steady trickle of cold water over the top of my head.

  “What’s the matter with you?” George breaks off his monologue about how great Miriam Parker is and looks at me curiously. “You’re really pale.”

  I open my mouth. Nothing comes out – not even a squeak.

  I close my mouth.

  My mother is coming here.

  How the hell do I explain this?

  I could tell her that the Earl’s called the Square Globe and said they needed… No.

  I could tell her that I was passing and happened to overhear… No.

  I could tell her that I lied (repeatedly) about being in the office doing marketing and I’ve actually been here all along…

  Definitely, absolutely, categorically no.

  There’s only one way out of this, short of changing my name and moving to Sweden immediately: I can’t let her know I’m here, and I can’t let her see me.

  Which means I’m going to need help.

  Checking the hallway, I push the door to wardrobe open and peer in. No sign of Nathalie or Jonna – or anyone else. Good. I haul George inside with me and close the door, leaning back against it.

  “George.”

  “Hmm?” He looks over from the mirrored wall, where he’s already been distracted by his reflection.

  I might as well get it over with.

  “Miriam Parker’s my mother.”

  At first, I’m not sure he heard me – and I’m about to say it again, louder, when I realize George is staring at me. In fact, he’s looking at me the way people always do when they find out. I recognize it. I can usually see the thoughts as they have them.

  You? Glamorous Miriam Parker? Elegant Miriam Parker? Stylish, pulled-together, successful Miriam Parker? Your mother?

  I wait, bracing myself for the comment – the “I should have guessed you’d have a connection” or “I guess it’s still who you know in theatre, not what you know.”

  But George doesn’t say any of that. He doesn’t actually say anything; he just keeps looking at me.

  This might be worse than usual – but just as I’m starting to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake, he nods. “Sure she is.”

  “You think I’m kidding.”

  “Look, they got me once with the ‘invisible concealer’, so you go and tell Amy or Nina or whoever’s trying to prank me this time that I’m not falling for it.” He shakes his head. “Miriam Parker, your mother!”

  “George.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Do I look like I’m trying to prank you?”

  He rolls his eyes and looks me up and down – and as his gaze moves from my shoes to my face and back again, his expression shifts. Just a little at first, then more and more as the impact of what I’m saying sinks in, until his mouth actually drops open. The next time he speaks, he sounds like someone who really has just seen a ghost. “You’re not kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. My mother is Miriam Parker, and she has no idea that I’m here.”

  “I can’t…I…no.” He puts both hands to his face and sinks into his make-up chair. Personally, I think it’s a little overdramatic, but that’s George.

  I feel like I should say something.

  “Sorry.”

  It’s a good start, right?

  “But…your mother.” George gives me an anguished look.

  “Like I said – sorry.” I pick up one of the brushes from the counter, turn it round in my hands and put it back. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re the only one I’ve told.”

  This does seem to make him feel better – at least a little, anyway – as he shuffles in his seat.

  “Well, okay then. And you don’t want anyone to know?”

  “Correct. You have to keep this quiet – I mean it,” I add, cutting him off before he can argue. “The second people find out, they…well, they assume. And they assume something wrong, okay?”

  “What?”

  This takes me so completely by surprise that all I can do is stare at him, while he stares back at me. Because he genuinely doesn’t seem to realize – or perhaps, says a small voice in the back of my head, perhaps it would never occur to George that anyone would think you didn’t deserve to be here…

  So I take a deep breath and tell him.

  “Okay. So, you know how I’ve spent all this time at the Square Globe, and then I applied for the internship here?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And you remember how when we went to the cinema, everyone was saying they missed me?”

  “Get you, Little Miss Popular.”

  “George? Focus.”

  “All right. Yes.”

  “I left. I left the Square – or I was leaving, anyway. I said I’d help them out until they finished their next production, and then I got the internship here, so…”

  “You’d already left? But I thought you loved it ther
e. You keep saying…”

  “I did love it there. I do. But.”

  He fidgets in his chair, trying to rest his arm on the side and failing. Eventually, he gives up and folds his hands in his lap. “I’m listening.”

  And because he is, and because he’s easy to tell, I do. I tell him about the director who spoiled it all with his little comments, the jokes about how they could have had someone else, someone maybe better, but Miriam Parker must have called in a favour. How it never seemed to matter that I was good on the prompt book and never missed a cue – he would always whisper behind my back when I passed.

  It wasn’t everyone – not by a long way, it was just one guy – but it was enough…because I started to wonder whether he was right.

  “I don’t want the same thing happening here – or anywhere else. You understand, right?”

  Shifting some more in his seat, George frowns. He sighs; he pouts. He runs the full range of George-emotions. And yes, I know he’s annoyed I didn’t tell him until now, but all I can do is hope he understands why.

  This is the longest George has been quiet since we met – even in the cinema, he was constantly whispering at me. But now? Nothing.

  After a long, long silence, right when I’m beginning to think he’s forgotten how to speak, he makes a grunting sort of acknowledgement. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Is that all I get after such a dramatic pause?

  “I forgive you.”

  “You what?”

  “I forgive you for not telling me.”

  I open my mouth to ask what that’s supposed to mean – and then I stop. This is George telling me he understands.

  “You promise you’ll keep it to yourself?”

  “Hope. Who am I going to tell?” He presses a hand flat on his chest, a picture of innocence – and that’s too much.

  “Everyone,” I laugh.

  He tries to look wounded; he almost manages.

  “Hope Parker. Anyone would think I’m a gossip from what you say.” But he breaks into a smile as he says it. “Out of interest, where does she think you are?”

  I sigh. “The back office of the Square Globe, helping with the marketing mail-out.”

  “Doing mail-outs? And she believed that? She has met you, hasn’t she?” His tone of utter disbelief makes me laugh; it almost makes me forget the predicament I’m in.