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 way 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 confusi
ng, 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 quite 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 mopheaded 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.
‘Have you tried?’
‘No.’ He had come to collect his suitcase while she was out at work, the day after the story broke, and in the busyness of the show, there’s never a moment to say what she needs to say. But she doesn’t know what that should be, could be. How do people ever sort things out?
‘Living is hard,’ she says. It sounds pathetic but she doesn’t care.
Hayley laughs. ‘Death’s worse, hen.’
‘I know.’ But does it always have to be this – you must always be grateful, because you’re not dead? Maybe it is that simple. They sit, quietly, in something that is starting to be companionship again. They’ve talked about David once or twice, but there doesn’t seem to be much more to say.
‘How are you and Auntie T getting on?’
Hayley gets up goes to the window; she perches on the sill, lights a cigarette and laughs. ‘Well, the novelty isnae wearing off yet. We sit up half the night talking about nothing, half the time.’
‘Do you like it?’ Ailsa keeps wanting to ask this, but she’s scared. Scared that the answer will be no. Or yes. Or that Hayley will ask the question back.
Her mother gives her a long look. ‘I think I do. How do you like your independence?’
She smiles. ‘Too early to say. I miss you. But I think I like it.’
Hayley nods. ‘That’s as it should be. I’m starting tae think I’ll maybe find a permanent job in Glasgow. I’ve done twenty-five years of locum work. Tamsin says that’s long enough tae be a temp. And I could do with some paid holidays.’
‘That sounds good,’ Ailsa says, and it does. And different; another soft shift in her landscape. But, Apple chips in, if you get to do what you like, then your mother does too.
Hayley leans out of the window to stub out her cigarette, and Ailsa sees her body stiffen. ‘Visitor for you, I think.’
‘Who?’
‘Who do you think?’ Hayley comes towards her, and the smell of cigarette smoke and soap is something that even Apple understands now is one of the best smells that there is. ‘Come on. He’s come to talk to you.’
So she goes to the window. He is standing on the pavement two storeys below her, looking up.
‘I got the calendar,’ he calls. ‘Wilkie sent it on.’
Ailsa pauses, absorbing the sound of his voice, reaching up to her. Then: ‘What do you think of it?’
‘I’ve emailed Libby and told her I’ll do anything she needs to promote it.’ He’s pale, tired-looking: his face is as white as the inside of her wrist. He rubs his hands across his forehead. She leans forward, craning out of the window to see him better. He takes a step forward. It would be so easy to ask him to come up. And, at the same time, impossible.
‘That’s good of you,’ she says, and means it.
He nods. ‘Your photo. You look perfect,’ he calls up. ‘Like – like yourself.’
She thinks of all the things she could say; for all she hasn’t been talking to Seb in real life, she’s had plenty to say to him as she’s walked to work and back, watched him on the stage, thought about him as she’s lain awake, high/tired after dancing. But she doesn’t. Because it comes to her – or Apple, maybe – in a flash, that he doesn’t have to be doing this – this ordinary, difficult thing of trying to put things right. He could be laughing with Meredith, flirting with – God, with anybody, he just needs to throw a stick and whoever it hits will probably be up for it. But he’s here, standing on the pavement, looking up at her, hope and sadness on his face. If there was a tree, she thinks, he’d climb it.
‘Thank you,’ she says. She hopes he knows she means it. She’s leaning further forward, because the one thing she does know is that she wants there to be less space, less air, between them. She opens her mouth to speak, to invite him in, but then there’s a smell, sudden and strong. Driftwood: beach and sky, love and sorrow. And it might be permiss
ion or it might be a warning, but it’s enough to stay her tongue.
He spreads his hands. ‘I don’t know what to say. If I could change it, I would. I know I’m not Lennox, and I wouldn’t try to be. But I’m trying to be a better me.’
Is her head nodding? She can’t tell. ‘Me too,’ she gets out, even though her mouth is as dry as the bark of an apple tree.
‘Don’t let this be it,’ he says, ‘please. We’re just getting started.’
She wants to say something, about how she knows she has to trust her heart but that feels too complicated, about how, maybe, however much he didn’t mean it, there was the smallest glance of truth in what he said. But nothing will come.
She nods. Apple aches as only a healthy heart can. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she says.
He nods, looks down, then up again, and takes off his sunglasses. She knows how it must hurt, this bright afternoon. And then he turns and walks away.
Hayley suggests that she take a rest before they leave for the show, and though Ailsa doesn’t think she’ll sleep, she actually falls into something like unconsciousness, and when her mother wakes her, for just a second or two she’s lost in time, and it’s as though she has her old heart back in her body, feeble and afraid as it was this time last year, and she’s frightened and panicky, and wraps her hands tight around her mother’s forearms and sits up with a lurch.
‘Easy,’ Hayley says, and Ailsa nods, swallows, and feels Apple’s steady beat. And knows what she has to do.
When she slips behind the green-room curtain before the show begins, a clutch of the actors is there, but there’s no sign of Seb. They look around, nod, and go back to their conversation. Seb’s jacket is on one of the pegs along the wall, along with his sash and the mask he’ll wear during the party scene. She takes the unicorn headband from her bag and hangs it over the mask, so he can’t miss it, and hopes he understands what she’s trying to say: I know, now, that what we do is not always what we are.
The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae (ARC) Page 28