Theatrical

by Maggie Harcourt

  “Thanks – you’re a lifesaver.” I stuff my own clothes into my rucksack and scramble for the corridor.

  Slipping into the auditorium through the pass door from backstage into the stalls, I do my best to act like I’ve been there for ages and am not even slightly late. Rick and Nina glance up when they hear the door, but they’re too busily immersed in their notes for anything else. Amy, though? Amy’s eyes lock on me, laser-like, and she waves me over.

  “Do we need to have another conversation about your timekeeping?”

  It’s said warmly, but I know a warning when I hear one. I roll through the list of excuses I could give…and stop. Because that’s all they are. Excuses.

  “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “Great. Okay, so.” She claps her hands together, and for a second it reminds me of Rick’s moving on gesture. I guess when you work so closely with someone, over and over again, you start catching each other’s mannerisms. Another week or two and I’d probably start to as well. “We’re almost ready to get started on the tech – can you use the PA system to call all the actors to the green room, then pop up to the stage door and pick up the sign-in sheets?” She hands me a large plastic box with a lid, along with a roll of clear plastic bags and a Sharpie. “When they’re all there, check everyone’s happy and give them each a bag for their valuables – phone, wallet, jewellery, that kind of thing. We’ll keep the whole lot here where there’s someone around to keep an eye on it. I don’t like the thought of things lying about with no one to watch over them. It’s not how I run my shows.” She closes her eyes, running through an imaginary list. “I’ll do the furniture checks with Nina, and I’ll hand out the personal props when you bring the company through from the green room. Then we’ll crack through the risk assessments and we’re away. All set?”

  I nod.

  Amy slaps the seat back enthusiastically, and we both pretend we didn’t see the little puff of dust that floats up into the light. “Great. Let’s see how far we can get before we need to stop for a tea break.”

  The company, when they finally make it to the wings with a lot of chattering, laughing, gossiping and general racket, fall silent as they all step onto the stage together for the first time and look out at the auditorium. Each of them scans it; measuring it, getting a feel for the weight of it, the scope of it; mentally adjusting the performances they had laid out in their heads. Not that Amy gives them long before she bounds up the temporary stairs and races through the list of things they need to not trip over, walk into or get in the way of.

  The prompt desk is sitting there, waiting; a wireless headset all ready. As expectant as the auditorium. I fish my copy of the script out of my bag and open it to the first page. It feels both heavy and weightless as I set it down on the prompt desk, as though it wants to take off and fly.

  It does. It wants to soar – I can feel it.

  Now I’ve had time to process it, Amy’s warning about professional behaviour makes sense – especially when I hear her giving exactly the same talk to the company…and spot a couple of the ensemble edge ever so slightly apart from each other. So that’s who George was talking about. I actually feel a little embarrassed for assuming it was only my behaviour that mattered: a little childish, a little self-centred. Because it’s not about me. It’s not personal – it’s professional. This is my chance to show that I get it.

  Her chat with the actors finished, Amy pulls out a camera. “All right, you lot. Company photo – say cheese!” They smile and laugh as she takes a snap, looking just like the pictures on the walls backstage, and then Amy turns to face the auditorium and gives Rick a thumbs up. “Ready when you are.”

  Settled down at his desk, he nods…and then he looks straight at me.

  “When you’re ready, Hope. And if you could bring in the curtain so we can take a look at that lighting cue right off the bat?”

  I pull on the headset. It’s heavier than the wireless one I’ve been using up to now, and the microphone takes some adjusting – but once it’s settled it feels like it’s always been a part of me. I flick a blue switch on the prompt desk and there’s a crackle.

  “Company to clear the stage, please. Tabs in.”

  The curtain slowly falls.

  When we stop for a tea break an hour later, I’m ready to sleep for a week – but it’s not even lunchtime yet. We only have two days of tech before our dress rehearsal day…and so far it doesn’t look promising. So instead of collapsing, I push the headset down to sit around the back of my neck and fold my arms on the desk and rest my head on top of them. An hour, and we’ve covered precisely one and a half scenes. The crew have reset the stage again and again and again and again while Rick debates whether the light is too pink or too orange, and reruns the scene time and again with a different gel filter on the lights – which means that every time, the right bar has got to be lowered from the grid so the lights can be changed. I’ve made so many calls that my throat feels dry and prickly and the handwriting all over my script looks like it might actually belong to someone else. Someone writing in Cyrillic, or possibly ancient Sumerian. I can’t read it, anyway. And that’s without counting the way I miscued the first three lighting changes four times. After that, even Amy rolled her eyes – and I told myself that the fourth time would be the last time. She must be wondering what I’m doing here, why she picked me – whether she made a mistake. I’m certainly wondering that.

  “I need my phone,” says a disembodied voice outside the safe circle of my arms, ignoring the fact that – like everyone else – I’m supposed to be on a break.

  “Hi, Tommy. Give me a minute. Why don’t you head over to the green room and grab a cup of tea – I’ll bring it through to you.”

  “No, I need it now.”

  “Of course you do,” I growl into my elbows, and reluctantly haul myself up from the desk to rummage in the box next to me, pulling out his plastic bag with a flourish. “Ta-da.”

  He takes the bag and flounces off.

  “Thank you?” I mutter at his departing back.

  Nothing.

  What else did I expect?

  I push through the doors out to the foyer, where everything is hushed and still – unlike the green room, where they’re all probably bickering about who got their blocking wrong and the fact we had to rerun the second section between Jamie and Lizzie seven times. I need time and space to clear my head right now, to tell myself I can do this, so I go straight to the deserted stalls bar, pick the nearest of the bench seats and lie down with my arms crossed over my face. Even here, I keep thinking I can hear my headset buzzing, or Rick calling my name, and I sit up twice to check before I realize it’s only one of the fridges humming.

  And then someone bangs a crate of bottles down on the bar, and I jump so hard that I almost fall off the bench.

  “What the hell…?” Heart pounding, I sit up and glare at the bar.

  “Sorry.” Luke wrinkles his nose as he says it. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  If anything, this makes my heart beat even faster. “It’s you.”

  Because nothing says hi, how are you this morning, than stating the incredibly obvious, does it? I wait for him to say something about last night in the fog – but he doesn’t. Not at all.

  “Well spotted.” He hefts another crate of bottles up onto the bar, then brushes his hands together and comes over to sit beside me.

  Maybe he’s forgotten? Or maybe I imagined it? Or maybe he thought it was an accident? I nod at the crates. “Bar work too? What about tech?”

  “I’m not needed until this afternoon. To be honest, I take pretty much any work I can get as long as it fits around college. They’re flexible here, so I help out with the bars when there’s shifts going.”

  I think about my own stack of unwritten assignments and unread notes building up in my inbox. I keep meaning to look at them when I get home in the evenings, but I’m just too tired. I’ll get to them. Eventually. But I’ve
only got to juggle everything for a few weeks – how does somebody do it all the time? “Bar work, acting, ushering…and studying? That’s a lot.”

  Luke snorts. “Acting’s not likely to pay the bills any time soon – even this job. Maybe one day, but not yet. And college won’t exactly pay for itself, and there’s textbooks and voice lessons and food, so…”

  He’s not going to mention last night, is he? He probably wants to pretend the whole thing didn’t happen.

  Okay.

  Fine.

  “I guess you’d rather be doing more of that than this, though – right?” I jerk my thumb back towards the auditorium, then at the bar. For a second his face blanks. I can’t read him at all; not until he speaks again.

  “I’d love to be doing that. That’s the dream. But in the real world, I have to do this too. We can’t all…” He stops suddenly and sighs. There’s a long silence, then finally he says, “I can’t ask Gran to pay for everything, you know? It’s not fair.” He fidgets on the bench and the whole cushion bounces slightly under his weight. “How’s the tech going?”

  I give him a look and he nods seriously.

  “That well?”

  I slump forward and drop my head into my hands. “We’re halfway through the second scene,” I mumble into my palms. “It’s never going to be ready.”

  “Yeah, we will be.”

  We.

  As if I’d echoed him out loud, he carries on.

  “Theatre’s a team game. Everyone here knows it and they’re all bringing their best. Besides, with Rick and Amy in charge and Nina backing them up, there’s no way it can’t be ready. They’ll make it ready.”

  “They’re always a team, are they?”

  “Pretty much. You know what directors are like. They build a creative crew and bring them onto every project. Same designers, same stage management, same lighting…the people who can see what they’ve got in their head without them needing to spell it out. Besides, Rick would be crazy to let Amy go – I heard she’s one of the best DSMs in the country.”

  I can certainly believe that, just from watching Amy this morning: while she’s left me to call the lighting and sound cues, she’s been taking notes; sometimes sitting back and studying the stage, sometimes jumping up and running through the pass door to adjust something backstage, or disappearing off to the balcony or the back of the stalls to check a sight line. It’s like there are twelve of her, and they’re all in motion, all the time. I can’t decide whether that’s inspirational or depressing, because no matter how much I try, I can’t see how I’m ever going to be able to do what she does. And I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be impressed by me right now. After everything Amy has said about the personal and the professional and “not getting distracted”, even sitting here talking to Luke feels somehow dangerous. So why then has dangerous never felt so safe?

  He shifts on the seat. He smells like ginger and fresh coffee and sunshine, and I want to lean my head back against his chest to listen for his heartbeat, like the sound of waves in a shell you press to your ear. I want to know if it’s going as fast as mine is.

  I could sit here beside him for ever; listening to the fridges click on and off, the clock over the bar tick-tick-ticking the day away.

  I blink at the clock.

  Timekeeping.

  Nuts.

  “That’s my break! Got to run…”

  Back in the stalls, I pass Tommy by the door, whispering urgently into his phone, and despite my best efforts to hear what he’s saying, all I pick up is a name: Emery.

  Emery Greenway, singer, Tommy’s on-off-on-off-again girlfriend, and just as famous in her own right as he is. From the way he’s huddled over his phone, they’re on again…and I’m willing to bet she’s not too happy about something.

  “Tommy – time…” I whisper, hoping he’ll get the hint. He waves me away.

  Fine. Let him get yelled at by Rick…

  Except it’s my job to keep things running to time, isn’t it?

  Crap.

  I turn around and march back up the aisle.

  “Tommy.”

  He turns his back to me and carries on.

  “Tommy!”

  Nope.

  I put on my best announcement voice. “Mr Knight, we’re starting again. If you could please take your place for scene three?”

  He turns around, mutters something into the phone and hangs up, meekly handing it to me and trotting off down the aisle.

  I look at the phone in my hand, and then at Tommy’s rapidly retreating back.

  “Huh.”

  Today is turning out to be full of surprises…

  I escape the house for the second day of tech rehearsals with a promise that, yes, I will definitely help Mum get the latest of the premiere dresses she’s made all packed up to be couriered off to its lovely owner. On the way to the theatre, I count up how long I spent sitting at the prompt desk yesterday, leaning over the script. Even with breaks, it’s a long time. A long time. So long, in fact, that I have to pull out my phone and check my maths on the calculator. Still A Long Time. I’ve never sat in the same place for so long without moving. Never. Not even for exams. Not even for the Angels in America marathon double-broadcast at the cinema (although it was definitely Priya and not me who ran out to the loos a grand total of eight times – I told her the “mammoth” drink cup was a bad idea).

  Even so, I can’t wait to do it again. But when I get to the Earl’s, the group around the stage door aren’t acting quite…normally.

  Usually when someone comes along, a few of them turn around to check who it is – and by now, when it isn’t Tommy, or occasionally one of the other cast members, they smile politely then lose interest pretty quickly. Their initial enthusiasm for all of us has faded a bit – having seen me run in and out a few times, a couple of them say hi to me now, but mostly I’m part of the scenery.

  But today, having seen it’s me, a couple of them point, and then say something to the others…and they all turn round.

  They all turn round and stare at me.

  Maybe it’s my hair? I check I’ve got matching trainers on; that I’ve remembered to actually put my (black) jeans on. (Mum even made a pointed comment about the fact I was wearing all black as I headed out this morning, so I had to pretend I hadn’t even noticed. I think she believed it. Maybe I can act after all…)

  Hair, clothes, all fine.

  So what are they looking at?

  I try a smile as I reach them, but my “Morning!” is only answered with complete silence.

  They are all staring at me. No, not staring. Glaring.

  And judging by the looks on their collective faces, they are mightily pissed off.

  What did I do?

  As I pass, they start whispering – and when I reach the step up to the stage door, I hear it. Quiet, but clear: someone is booing. It’s very quiet – almost too quiet to hear – but hear it I do.

  Someone in the group is booing me.

  I almost stop – but the sound is already getting louder. It’s not just a whisper now, I can hear it clearly. And so can everyone else.

  My face on fire, I half-turn to ask them what the hell’s going on…but seeing me hesitate, another voice joins in. And then another. And another. Suddenly, they’re all booing me and shouting at me and the noise is deafening and I don’t understand – so I dive through the door and run up the stairs, stopping only when I get to Roly’s desk.

  Roly herself is peering out of the little window that overlooks the side of the theatre, watching the show outside.

  “Did you hear that? What the hell?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” She turns around slowly and folds her arms.

  “What?”

  “Not seen it, have we?”

  “Seen what?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Roly picks her phone up from the desk and fiddles with it, then drops it on the sign-in book in front of me.

  On the screen is the front page of the SixGuns gossip section – an
d the first thing on it is a screamingly red header, and a tabloid-style photo of two people under an umbrella in the rain.

  The caption?

  KNIGHT IN SHINING ARDOUR?

  And the photo?

  Tommy, holding his giant umbrella over my head, leaning towards me with his eyes fixed on my face…

  Oh god.

  Oh god, oh god, oh god.

  “What…?” All the blood that had rushed to my cheeks immediately drains all the way down to my feet and I scroll through the story, not really reading it. The words sort of…glance off my eyeballs and bounce around the desk.

  Hollywood heart-throb Tommy Knight…

  Cosying up to a mystery brunette…

  Outside his hotel…

  Walk in the rain…

  Very close…

  There are other photos: me coming out of his hotel, looking around. Me walking into his hotel…

  The phone. The laundry. The guy on the pavement.

  Oh god.

  My voice, when I finally manage to get it to work again, doesn’t even sound like mine. “What is this?”

  “That?” Roly holds her hand out for her phone, and I pass it back – almost dropping it, I’m shaking so hard. I think I might be sick. Or I might pass out. I’m not sure. Maybe both? She studies me as she puts her phone away. “Lead story on SixGuns. But there’s been photos up on fan sites since late last night.”

  “I…I don’t…I…” I look at her. “What do I do?”

  She narrows her eyes at me, and there’s a long, long silence. Eventually, she asks it almost casually. “Not true, is it?”

  “Are you kidding me? Seriously?”

  Faces flash through my mind so fast they blur: Mum. Dad. Priya. Amy. Luke!

  Panic. That’s what this is.

  Has anyone seen it? How do I stop them?

  Roly is oblivious to my complete terror. “That’s not really an answer, though, is it?”