by LK Fox
People seem to think that that an assistant stage manager is the one who gets famous when the star breaks her leg. Actually, in a place like the People’s Space, it’s a really shit job. It turned out they were desperate to find a dogsbody who’d fix everything from their leaking roof and blocked toilets to their disastrous finances without expecting much in return.
Although the basic pay was lousy, I was able to supplement my income by running the bar on performance nights. The People’s Space was in one of those neighbourhoods which everyone always says is ‘up and coming’ but never really gets much better; that meant there was a desperate, determined and deluded enclave of middle-class property owners who philanthropically supported the arts, right down to amateur poetry readings, so I made really good tips.
I spent way too much time at that theatre. I went back and forth, checking on Gabriel, then hanging around work. There were shows every night of the week because a separate theatre group came in on Sundays and ran an open-mic night. I didn’t really talk to anyone. I had enough to think about without the burden of friendships.
While the audience was inside the auditorium, I usually sat at one of the plastic-topped tables with a notepad, listening to the rumble of trains, making sketches of Gabriel and trying to work out how I could get the company from this week to the next without having the electricity shut off.
On one particularly rainy, miserable evening when there were more onnstage than in the audience, I looked up, and there he was. He smiled in a quizzical way that suggested he knew me but was having trouble remembering where from.
I said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. Where’s the crocodile?’
He gave me a strange look.
I waved my hand in the direction of a crumpled Peter Pan poster behind me – it was for the previous year’s Christmas pantomime. ‘Peter Pan,’ I explained, now feeling awkward. ‘I’m wearing a green top, short hair. People always comment. Although I feel more like one of the Lost Boys.’
It didn’t seem as if he was going to go away, so when he gestured to the empty chair I shrugged and let him join me. He kept a respectable distance while I checked him out in the mirror. He wasn’t especially attractive. Thin-faced, with a too-pointed chin and a ridiculous moustache that looked stuck on. Underdressed, underfed and probably unloved. He wore a baggy suit that had seen better days and a tightly knotted tie. But the eyes held something. I was studying a bill for fitting a new drain cover that was double the original quote and was ready to be distracted.
‘And before you ask, yes, I work here,’ I said. ‘Although I don’t know if I’d call it work. For that, I’d have to be earning at least minimum wage. I love theatres. Even ones like this. I mean, it’s not exactly the Palladium.’
He didn’t seem inclined to say much.
‘People always think it must be interesting working in a place like this, but actually we have a lot of staff meetings about toilets.’
He said, ‘I work in an office that’s so quiet you can actually hear the strip-lighting.’ And he grimaced.
It was a line I might have come out with, and I laughed. He was really trying to be friendly.
‘What are you working on?’ he asked.
I instinctively covered the page of Gabriel drawings with my hand. ‘Nothing interesting, I just make notes when it’s quiet. I’m not talented enough to write a play.’ I turned over my notepad. ‘I mostly make lists of things I have to do.’
‘But you like the theatre. You must do to be here.’ He looked up doubtfully at the rain-blackened ceiling.
‘I was desperate enough to take this job. I’m the ASM as well, which means, technically, I have to understudy the actors’ parts. It means I’d have to go on if there was a no-show.’
‘Any role?’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t do that. Be all those different people.’
‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet. I quite like the idea of being someone else. You know, not being me.’
I dragged my chair a little closer. ‘I mean, that’s what they say about the best character actors, that they have no personalities of their own. I don’t think I have a personality at all. Sometimes, I look in the mirror and don’t see anyone looking back.’
He looked shocked. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’
I studied him more closely. I had tried making friends on the internet for a while, although I had never hooked up with anyone. I always found excuses to avoid meeting the few boys who had actually wanted to get together. Sometimes I joined chat-rooms, but I always left if things got too personal or heated. I didn’t like confrontations, and there were too many crazies lurking around. So speaking to someone face to face was a novelty.
A sudden loud round of applause from the auditorium alerted me. I rose. ‘That’s the intermission,’ I warned. ‘I have to work.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, rising also. ‘Maybe I’ll catch the play next time.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I warned him. The current play was called Hate Crime: The Musical. ‘I’m Ella, by the way.’
He reached forward and shook my hand vigorously. ‘I’m—’
‘Actually, I know who you are,’ I replied, enjoying the look of surprise on his face. You’re Mr Buckingham.’
‘He looked at me as if I’d just performed some kind of amazing mind-reading trick.
‘You’re still wearing your visitor pass.’ I reached over and peeled the sticker from his lapel, and we both laughed.
I headed back behind the bar. The thought of being caught in a stampede of audience members who needed a stiff drink to get through the second half must have frightened him, because when I looked up he had gone.
In the middle of that week, he came back, and again on the Friday, half an hour before the intermission. We talked, although he was careful to allow me my space, because it was the only quiet time I had. He seemed as awkward and shy as I was, and after a while I started to look forward to seeing him.
I couldn’t understand what he wanted. He seemed to enjoy my company, but didn’t talk about himself much and never stuck around for very long. He listened when I spoke, which was something of a new experience for me, and he seemed thoughtful and caring, but there was something missing. We mostly discussed abstract ideas and things we’d read in the papers. He said he couldn’t understand parents who neglected their children. He thought they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. That was the word he used: ‘punished’. He was forceful and passionate on the subject.
I’d see him come in, mostly when the bar was dead, and I’d call, ‘Hey, Buck!’ because the name was unsuitable and funny. I was usually careful about opening up to strangers. There wasn’t much in the last few years that I was happy to discuss, but he had a way of making everything feel natural and uncomplicated.
Buck continued to turn up at the theatre during the quiet times, so that we could sit together in the bar that smelled of damp wood and talk about the world. It felt as if we were sharing in some kind of conspiracy, us against the idiocracy, the rule-makers, the suits in power, all the institutionalised people we would never be able to trust.
I found it easy to talk to him. I told him about some of the problems I’d faced in the past. He seemed every bit as shy as I was, so the arrangement suited us both. One night. I asked him out for a meal after the performance.
‘I can entirely understand if you don’t want to,’ I said hastily. ‘I mean, we hardly know each other. But we’ve talked so much about doing the things we want, you and I, and perhaps it’s time, I mean, if you’d—’
He pressed his finger to his lips and headed towards the door.
We went for a curry in an awful neighbourhood joint but I explained that it was within my price range. He didn’t mind.
It crossed my mind that he might be married. But I didn’t care. I was just grateful that somebody was there for me. He was the first man I had fully connected with.
After we’d got to know each other, I went back to his flat and
stayed for a while. It was social housing, and not the good kind but one of those estates on Newington Street near the river that had simply been left to rot until they could be torn down.
I couldn’t understand why he would live in such a place, even if he was broke. He was incredibly untidy. There was a single small bar of hotel soap in the bathroom, no cleaning products or cloths. The carpet looked as if it had never been vacuumed. The only table was covered in computer parts, cables, microphones, switches, camera lenses and bits of junk. I had no idea what he was constructing, and he didn’t want to tell me. I knew this wasn’t how married men lived, because I’d had glimpses inside their homes.
But a few nights later I went back there again, and this time we drank quite a lot of wine and it was late, so I accepted his offer to stay over. There were some crazy kids upstairs who stamped about and played loud bhangra music all night. He said they often hung around the hallways causing trouble.
Finally, it went quiet and we lay down, and he turned out the light and all I could hear was our matched breathing. We didn’t do anything except lie next to each other, our arms touching in the narrow bed. I told him I didn’t really expect or want anything more, and I could tell he was disappointed.
‘Hey, Buck,’ I whispered. ‘Are you awake?’
I needed to explain why I felt this way, and that involved telling him the whole story, so I started talking. I couldn’t stop; it was as if a valve had been turned within me and couldn’t be reset until everything was emptied out. I had never been able to give a completely honest confession to a priest, yet on this sunken mattress, lying next to a naked, silent man in the dark, I was able to reveal myself fully.
When I had finished, he lay with his face turned away and still didn’t say a word. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry or sad. Eventually, we fell asleep. For the first time since my pregnancy, I slept soundly for a full eight hours.
When I got up the next morning, I looked around the apartment. He owned hardly any clothes – certainly nothing halfway decent – and had no personal belongings to speak of. I found myself feeling sorry for him. I thought something terrible must have happened in his past to make him live like this. I left without waking him up.
To my surprise, Buck came back to the theatre. We fell into a routine. Sometimes I stayed over, although nothing physical happened between us. It wasn’t a problem; it wasn’t even something we felt the need to discuss. I stole some strings of Christmas lights to brighten up his bedroom and tried to clean up the kitchen. Sometimes he disappeared for a few days. I felt that something bad had happened a long time ago that had affected him deeply, but I knew he wasn’t ready to talk about it. I could see hurt in his eyes. I suppose I thought he was like me in that respect.
*
At the weekend, I planned to go down to Ashton, just to walk past the front door of 17 Wellington Close and see that everything was all right. It was cold but sunny, and after another long week in the theatre I needed some fresh air. The six-week limit I’d originally set myself had passed ages ago, so I was anxious to draw a line under the whole thing and see Gabriel one last time.
When Buck wanted to know where I was going, I decided to be truthful. He listened in silence, but I could see in his eyes he wanted to help me.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ I said. ‘It’s just something I have to deal with for a few more weeks, until I can be sure my son is really safe. My biggest problem is that I can’t hear what’s going on inside the house. I just keep hoping they’ll leave a window open or something.’
He had a beaten-up old car, so we drove to the street where my son now lived.
‘You can see the problem,’ I said, pointing to the ground-floor windows with their stupid beige window blinds that prevented me from seeing in properly. ‘I can’t get around to the kitchen side, where they spend most of their time. If I could get inside the house somehow, I could reassure myself once and for all, and that would be the end of it.’
I looked back at the closed front door. ‘I just need to get inside,’ I said.
Nick
The red Toyota nearly winged me as it passed.
I thought, Maybe they’re being paid to protect Buckingham. How many people are involved in this? But, of course, the kids were just mean little bastards looking for a victim, someone who stuck out like a sore thumb on their turf, and I was wearing Kurt Geiger designer trainers, not exactly standard issue in this part of town.
They had my phone with the picture of Buckingham’s car on it. I couldn’t be sure that I had remembered to save it to my desktop. The other end of the hotel alley crossed the railway and came out into a truck-choked main road. It ran parallel to a second, narrower street that I could cover on foot. As I hit my stride, I started rediscovering muscles left too long out of use. I entered the road and began searching the queued vehicles ahead. The Toyota was still idling there, bouncing forward, impatiently trying to cut in. I was two cars back and closing. The Toyota’s windows were smeared with condensation; I could only make out dark shapes inside. Just before I reached it, a break in the vehicles allowed the driver to pull out.
I was almost thrown across the hood of a delivery van. Keeping on my feet and skirting into the traffic, I ran between cyclists and motorbike couriers. The rear passenger window of the Toyota rolled open as one of the teenaged boys looked back. The vehicles ahead were braking for the changing lights.
I surprised myself by going straight for the open window. My body mass propelled me halfway into the vehicle and I grabbed at the nearest boy, seizing hair and fistfuls of his jacket, pulling him up against the inside of the car door.
Before anyone inside even realised what was happening, I managed to drag the little bugger out through the window. The other doors opened and the kids piled out. By that time, the car was firmly mired in traffic. The surrounding drivers stared blankly at us through their windscreens, as if they were watching some kind of YouTube clip.
I think, at this point, I got a bit overexcited. The boys fell away from me. They had very little coordination and had probably been raised on the kind of gangster films in which groups of thugs wait to attack the hero in turn. Pedestrians stopped to watch but kept their distance. They knew better than to get involved in a fight around here. A traffic warden carried on ticketing without a backward glance. Just another day in the big city.
Inside, I was marvelling at my own courage. I wanted to shout, This isn’t me! I don’t even know where this is coming from!
Finally, a shank made its appearance. The Toyota’s driver had decided to intervene, dropping a discreet penknife blade into his fist and waving it at me. I stepped out of the way and undercut his right leg, felling him. It sounds cleverer than it was. Basically, I just kicked him; plus, I’m over six feet and they were all a head and a half shorter than me. As the bystanders backed up, I slammed the driver’s face in his own car door. Even the traffic warden had to wince. It wasn’t elegant but it did the job.
I pulled my wallet out of the boy’s jacket pocket. Cars were honking at the stalled Toyota, the drivers shouting and trying to manoeuvre around it. A mad-looking old lady started to applaud. You know what it’s like in London; anything short of a nuclear explosion just gets treated as a minor annoyance that might cause unnecessary journey delay.
At the next junction I could make out the bright tabards of two police officers moving along the pavement. I began to panic – I needed my phone. As I rounded the front of the car, I saw it lying in the gutter, its screen cracked. Scooping it up, I limped off back to my car, leaving behind a disordered tangle of arguing teens.
I returned my wallet and phone to my pocket, then slipped into the street at my back and made my way home. I hoped nobody had filmed the altercation. I could see the headlines: HORTICULTURAL THERAPIST BEATS UP SMALL-BONED TEENAGER IN BUSY STREET.
Despite my triumph, I was wasting time. It was obvious the kids knew nothing about Buckingham or my boy. They’d picked a fight because I was
where I wasn’t supposed to be, that’s all. Kids in fake Abercrombie & Fitch sweatpants aren’t complex organisms.
*
When I reached home and let myself into the shadowed hallway, something really strange happened. I fell over the last stack of Ben’s boxes, which were still just inside the door. The top one dislodged, scattering his clothes everywhere.
Something rolled across the floor. I found myself looking down at a red Nike baseball cap with a tightly curved peak.
I had seen one just like it before, through the window of another car. Yet, I didn’t remember ever seeing Ben wearing such a thing. No, I told myself, not him. Once you start looking for suspects, you can find them everywhere.
Ben and Buckingham had a similar build . . . but I knew Ben’s walk. It never varied. Surely he couldn’t change it so much that I had failed to recognise him? As I put the cap back in its place, I decided to check the other boxes. Ben had packed them all himself. I hadn’t been prepared to help him leave me. Down the side of the one at the bottom I found a blue cardboard folder I had never seen before. It had been taped shut in four separate places.
Tearing the lengths of tape off, I reached inside and pulled out the folder’s contents. I found myself holding the few old photographs he had never got around to digitizing. Flicking through them, I failed to find any shots of Ben in a baseball cap but uncovered some earlier images of him in the countryside and on a seaside promenade with Gabriel and his ex-wife. I thought I’d seen all his pictures, but I’d never seen these before. They looked awkward together, as if they’d just had a fight and had been asked by the photographer to stand closer. Who had taken these shots, anyway?