After Ever After

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘It’s true, Bill!’ she protests, stamping her heel ever so slightly as she says it. ‘I heard it on Radio Four, for goodness sakes!’

  Bill snorts derisively as I approach the group.

  ‘What’s true?’ I ask, praying the answer won’t be that ‘Kitty Kelly shagged her gardener up on the beacon this morning’. Gratifyingly Barbara looks at me as if I’m the cavalry.

  ‘Calamity Jane has recently been discovered to be a lesbian musical,’ she tells me seriously. ‘In fact, and don’t take this the wrong way, Kitty, but actually the main role is the one I’m playing – Katie. It’s about her sexual awakening in the Wild West, which is a metaphor for vagina.’

  I open and close my mouth.

  ‘Right,’ I say, turning to the mountainous quivering human that is Bill. ‘What do you think, Bill – Wild West as vagina?’

  ‘Total bollocks!’ Bill proclaims with his least conversational shout. ‘There used to be a time when lesbianism was an elegantly discreet way of fucking, and now it’s bloody everywhere. If you ask me, lesbians have prostituted themselves as a culture to men’s pathetic egocentric fantasies. I mean, you can’t turn on the TV without two women fiddling with each other’s bits these days. And now Calamity Jane was a lesbian. What next? Juliet shagging her nurse over the balcony? Jane Eyre having it away with the housekeeper? Total rubbish.’ The rest of the cast has fallen into a somewhat shocked but mostly confused silence.

  ‘I think it’s got more to do with a modern society that’s happy to be culturally diverse and accept its many faceted aspects, which has room for all kinds of people, even in prime-time TV slots, Bill,’ I say calmly. Bill murmurs bollocks a decibel lower than an Oasis gig.

  ‘I must say, Barbara,’ I say, ‘I can’t really see it with Calamity Jane. I mean, she’s madly in love with Wild Bill?’ It seems faintly ridiculous for me to be discussing the motivation of my version of Calamity, but I’m intrigued and relieved to have something else to think about for a moment.

  Barbara tips her head to one side, giving me a curiously birdlike look.

  ‘Well it’s obvious when you start to think about it. Calamity loves to dress as a man; lesbians dress like men, although I’ve never understood why, really, but anyway – she hates all things girlish and despises Wild Bill …’

  ‘Have you never heard of sexual tension!’ Bill bellows, causing another momentary hush in the chatter. ‘It’s what we had last Christmas just before the panto and what dissipated rapidly half an hour later in the props cupboard!’

  I give up, looking aghast, and instead marvel at Barbara’s determination to ignore her tormentor.

  ‘And,’ Barbara continues as if he wasn’t there, ‘and when she goes to Chicago to find Adelaide Adams it’s plain she finds her sexually attractive, it’s in the script.’ Sensing Bill’s next interruption Barbara rushes on, ‘When her and Katie are in the cabin they sing “A Woman’s Touch” – it’s clearly about lesbian masturbation …’

  ‘I thought all female masturbation was lesbian,’ Bill says, pushing Barbara over the limit at last.

  ‘Bill, I slept with you two days after my husband walked out on me for a teenager. There was no sexual tension. I was a pitiful confused woman on the rebound, not to mention diazepam, and I needed some comfort. All I can say is, thank God we did it standing up as at least I made it out of that cupboard with my life if not my dignity intact, and it is you that insists upon attaching more significance to what happened than I. It was a sordid pointless encounter that I didn’t want to engage in and which I used to regret. Now I can’t even be bothered to regret it any more.’ Barbara spits at him like a small sleek harrier in full attack.

  ‘Exactly!’ I shout, knocking her sideways out of the air.

  She blinks at me and smiles. ‘Thank you for understanding, Kitty.’

  I smile back at her. ‘No, Barbara – thank you.’

  Barbara gives Bill one last long scathing look. ‘Secret love,’ she says coldly. ‘A love so secret she can’t speak its name. Lesbians.’ She crosses her arms under her small bust, pivots on her heels and marches backstage.

  ‘Well, Bill,’ I say with a wry smile, ‘there’s one woman you haven’t quite managed to work your charm on.’

  ‘Majestic,’ Bill sighs. ‘Like Diana the huntress. Ah, Kitty, unrequited love, it’s a terrible thing.’

  The house lights dim before I can respond, and a spot illuminates Caroline on stage.

  ‘Right, let’s get a move on, shall we!’ Caroline’s dulcet tones instantly hush the chatter and gossip.

  ‘As you know, tonight was to be our penultimate rehearsal, Friday the dress rehearsal and our first performance next Wednesday. However, there’s been a change of plan. Today is the dress rehearsal, Friday’s slot has been cancelled due to double-booking with the sixth form summer ball, and our first performance is on Monday, now running for five shows, okay?’ A stunned silence flattens the atmosphere.

  ‘Um, but,’ I hear Clare’s voice pipe up. She must have arrived late. ‘Some of the costumes aren’t quite finished yet, Caroline. I’ve arranged to fit Calamity’s ballgown tomorrow so it’d be ready for Friday’s rehearsal and …’

  Caroline taps her heel vigorously.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m perfectly aware of the constraints, but I had hoped that I was working with a team of professionals here, a group of people who when asked to can rise to a challenge and above it!’ She flings her unseasonable red velvet scarf over her tightly veined neck. ‘Now, as you well know, the Tiny Tot Tap and Tango Troupe were supposed to be performing for the festival here on Monday and Tuesday evening, but there’s been an outbreak of chickenpox that’s sweeping through the primary schools of Berkhamsted and the troupe’s dwindled from forty-seven to six, a huge disappointment for the camcorder-bearing parents of our community. Our mayor called upon me to save the day. “Caroline,” he asked of me, “are you the one to save us from looking bad in the Gazette when they compare the Berkhamsted Festival to the Tring one?” And I said unto him, “Yes, I am the one, Kenneth.”’ She fixes us with a steely eye. ‘Are you going to make me a liar or are you going to prove that we can do it and, what’s more, increase the door takings by as much as seventy pounds!’ Caroline raises her fist and rattles her bracelets fiercely like an am dram Amazonian queen, and a strangely bloodthirsty cheer rumbles through the crowd.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bill mumbles miserably in my ear. ‘Did someone just say we declared war on the French?’

  I smile to myself. ‘More like the Tring Victorian Street Festival,’ I reply, wondering not for the first time what ancient grudge means that the two towns, barely five miles apart, couldn’t schedule their respective festivals on different weeks.

  ‘Same thing,’ Bill sniffs, before edging through the crowd towards the piano.

  Wild Bill snogs me with stoic diligence as the final curtain falls, and I bear it stiffly, counting the seconds until it is over. I thought the dress rehearsal went pretty well, all things considered – things like Barbara’s state of high-coloured coquettishness ever since her encounter with Bill, which makes me wonder if she’s been wonderfully Shakespearian about pretending not to like him. And the fact that Wild Bill, bless him, can’t seem to get much wilder than a mildly agitated elderly house dog, and that the only person in the whole ensemble who’s got a voice worth listening to has been sitting in the wings fringing a fake suede jacket from Mark One with curtain trimmings. But at least for an hour or so I haven’t thought about anything else. I haven’t thought about where Fergus and I go from here and I haven’t thought about … anything else.

  ‘Do you fancy a quick drink before we go?’ Clare asks me as she packs away her handiwork. ‘I don’t feel much like going home right now, I’m all overexcited.’ She tries to bite her smile back but it seems irrepressible.

  I look at her sideways, noticing the flush in her cheeks, and remember that she had a man round at her flat when I spoke to her this morning, a morning which seems ligh
t years away.

  ‘I wish that an afternoon with two babies would give me that kind of glow,’ I tell her, raising an eyebrow. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve been dying to tell you.’ Clare laughs, her eyes dancing and her resolve to keep a secret crumbling instantly. ‘Oh, I’m not supposed to tell, but …’

  Just as she opens her mouth Dora appears over her shoulder. I shake my head and pinch myself that it really is Dora, and for some reason my first thought is that she’s come to tell me she’s dead, and my second thought is that she knows about Gareth and she’s come to help me.

  ‘Dora! Oh, thank God!’ I exclaim, holding my arms out to her. Dora smiles, looking vaguely surprised at my reaction, and hugs me, confirming that she is real, and at least currently alive. She’s really here with a real overnight bag. And a very real suitcase.

  ‘Oh hiya.’ Clare deflates, seeing her opportunity for indiscretion fade away.

  ‘All right, mate, all right, Kits.’ Dora’s arm clings around my neck. She’s not drunk, at least not with any substance I can smell; instead she seems to be holding on to me almost for protection.

  ‘How did you know?’ I ask her. ‘Oh God, I’m so glad to see you.’ I glance over her shoulder fully expecting to see an ex in full sail heading towards us after her blood, usually because Dora’s moved into their flat, turned their lives upside down and left with their favourite CD. Has she chucked Bruce or Wayne or whoever it was who sounded like a hero in a western?

  ‘Know what?’ Dora looks at Clare. ‘I just thought I’d pop down for a few days …’

  I eye Dora’s large suitcase on wheels and laugh hysterically, feeling my façade slip dangerously low.

  ‘What were you planning we should do, our very own fashion parade? Open a shop called Dora’s Entire Wardrobe?’

  ‘Oh, it looks like more than it is, you know. Tampons.’

  I shake my head and pick up her overnight bag. ‘Come on, you can tell me at home,’ I say, whispering to Clare, ‘you can tell me all about “him” tomorrow at the dress fitting.’

  Clare raises a hopeful eyebrow and the three of us head for the door.

  ‘Ah, Kitty.’ Mr Crawley grabs my arm. ‘You never did get your wine. I apologise.’

  I shrug; I had forgotten it. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, but he holds on to my arm, still searching my face for something. ‘About anything, really. I’m all right.’

  In that moment that I say it I believe it, and Mr Crawley seems to also as he lets go of me. In that moment everything is fine, back to normal. Fergus and I have finally let go of our fantasy marriage in favour of a real one, Dora is here like the proverbial good fairy/bad penny, and whatever predicament she’s arrived with is bound to keep my mind off things. Even Clare seems to have replaced her permanently forlorn air with a smile.

  And what happened with Gareth was nothing. Nothing happened, it was nothing. He is nothing.

  The moment Fergus sees Dora standing behind me in the door frame his face goes from shock to irritation to relief in about five seconds flat. Maybe, like me, he’s secretly pleased that there’s a third adult in the house to diffuse what’s left of weeks of accumulated tension.

  ‘Dora! What a nice surprise,’ he says, kissing her, and I almost believe him.

  ‘Where’s Ella?’ I ask. Usually she has either crashed out mid-play or is still up pulling Fergus’s hair or enthusiastically engaging in some repetitive game that Fergus lost interest in about a minute after he initiated it.

  ‘In bed, has been since eight-thirty.’ He looks at my incredulous face. ‘I know, it’s a miracle! I read her a story, sang her a song and she went to sleep instantly, possibly to escape the dreadfulness of my voice. Tea?’

  As Fergus heads off to the kitchen, Dora falls headlong on to the sofa, picks up a cushion and stuffs it over her head.

  ‘Ooooh, this is a nice sofa,’ she moans. ‘This isn’t any of your DFS rubbish, you can tell. Gorgeous. I’ll sleep here.’

  I perch on the few square inches of sofa remaining and look at her. In the warmth of the lamplight she looks almost translucent, as if the light in the room is coming from within her paper-thin façade.

  ‘What’s happened, Dora?’ I ask her quietly.

  ‘Oh, fucking Thingy, I split up with him, only the fucker is still in my flat, can’t get him out, the wanker. I don’t know why I ever let him in in the first place. It’s never my policy to let men into my house. Must have had an embolism or something.’ She delivers this speech with her customary hard-bastard indifference, but etched across the planes of her face is another story.

  ‘Sorry, Dora, do you have sugar?’ Fergus sticks his head round the door, nods at the recumbent Dora and makes a quizzical expression, which I return with a ‘blowed if I know’ shrug.

  ‘Shit loads,’ she replies into the pillow, and Fergus and I smile at each other for a moment longer before he softly closes the door behind him.

  ‘So, what about you?’ Dora examines my face. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  I sit on the floor by her head and try to gauge if now is the right time to talk to her. I decide that it isn’t.

  ‘Listen, I know you. You wouldn’t leave a man you didn’t want any more in your flat. You’d throw him out and kick him in the nuts, and then you’d stamp on his head a bit. This is out of character. There’s more to this than an ex that won’t go away, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, you’d be at Camille’s. I know I’m the last resort friend, and there’s no point in denying it.’

  Dora smiles and hauls herself up into a seated position. ‘You’re not a last resort friend, you’re just the best one. No offence to Camille, but you have a more special bond with the person you broke into the boys’ changing rooms with. It’s history.’

  I smile at the memory of eleven-year-old Dora and I huddled behind the less than fragrant coats and duffle bags on sports day determined to find out once and for all what a willy looked liked. When the boys filed in after a cross-country marathon and duly stripped off for a communal shower, we couldn’t believe our eyes.

  ‘That surely can’t be what all the fuss is about,’ Dora squealed. ‘Its revolting!’

  We were caught, of course. Suspended for two days and reviled for the rest of that term as pervy sluts.

  ‘Don’t give me all that pally reminiscence crap.’ I force myself to snap out of my reverie. ‘You always do that, always. What happened?’

  Dora blows the air out of her cheeks and tips her head back to examine the ceiling.

  ‘Well, you and Camille were right, I guess. About the booze leading me on the rocky road to ruin and all that jazz. As soon as Bruce and I started boozing we started smoking and then doing the odd line until it got to be a regular thing, and then … the thing I can’t believe is how little time it took, Kits. After years of building up to smack and months of getting off of it, in less than two months I was right back where I started.’

  I don’t let the faintest hint of what’s raging in my heart show on my face as I ask her the inevitable question.

  ‘Have you taken heroin again?’

  Dora closes her eyes for a moment before opening them to look me in the face.

  ‘Yes.’ Her eyes are perfectly unreflective black pools. ‘I got in from work yesterday and he had a fix all ready and waiting for me. Said it was to celebrate our anniversary. I didn’t even hesitate, Kits, I just went to it, and, and I wanted it. And for a while there it felt fucking fantastic, just like coming home. I woke this morning, realised it was ten a.m., and every part of me was hurting, begging for more of it. I knew he’d have some more gear on him, I knew I could have it if I wanted it …’ Her thin white fingers reach for my hand and grip it tightly. ‘But I don’t want to die, Kits, not yet. So I left him to it and I packed my bag and I came here to you because you know me the best and you’ll sit on my head to stop me going back out there, I know you will. I can’t go back there, Kitty, it’ll kill me.’

  In a second the anger and f
ear dissipate and Dora and I hold each other, each one of our years of knowing each other etched into the ease with which we are able to hold each other.

  ‘Oh God, Dors, you’ve done the right thing. You’ll be all right here,’ I say, holding her close.

  ‘I know, I know I will. Sodding Bruce. What kind of a twat is called Bruce anyway.’ Dora hastily wipes her tears away. ‘Listen, I’ll need to find a meeting locally, starting tomorrow. Will you help me? And can I stay here until I’m all right again?’

  I nod yes and yes to both questions.

  ‘What about Bruce? How are you going to get him out of your place?’

  Dora looks stricken for a moment. ‘I dunno, I could get him whacked, I suppose. I know people. Look, I don’t want to talk about Bruce any more. I want to talk about you. Something’s happened to you. Did you fuck the gardener?’ My face must have revealed the truth before I dissemble, and Dora’s eyes widen. ‘You did!’ she whispers. ‘You fucked the gardener! Fuck me!’ She looks at me with disbelief. ‘I’ve got to tell you, mate, I disapprove. I mean, Fergus – he adores you …’

  ‘Shhhh.’ I look hastily around. ‘Look, it’s not like that, it just sort of …’ I find that I can’t speak and just at that moment we hear Fergus in the hallway. I just press my lips together and silently plead with Dora to do the same. She squeezes my hand, frowning with concern as Fergus carefully places his tray of teas on the table.

  ‘So, Dora, what’s new?’ he says amid a luxurious yawn.

  Dora shrugs nonchalantly. ‘Oh you know, escaping to the peaceful refuge of the country to avoid a life of crime and degradation in the big city. I expect Kitty’ll fill you in. Oh, and I missed you, Fergus, so much.’

  Her tone is the gently sarcastic one she always uses with Fergus, and his returning smile is the same one of weary tolerance that it has always been. I breathe out in relief. Dora won’t let me down, not even if she disapproves.

  Chapter Twenty-two