The House on Fortune Street

by Margot Livesey

  “We’re glad you could come and stay,” he said, shaking Abigail’s hand.

  “Thank you,” she said. She found herself looking into oddly youthful gray eyes.

  Later, over dinner, Alastair was generous with the wine and she allowed herself a rare second glass. Fiona asked where she had grown up and Abigail explained about her parents and her peripatetic childhood. Her father was over in Ireland at the moment, last heard from in Donegal. As for her mother and her new husband, they had made it clear that Abigail was welcome for lunch, but nothing more.

  “So you’re an orphan,” said Fergus, sounding pleased.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Fiona, her eyes rounding like Dara’s.

  “No, really,” Abigail protested. “They’ve always been like this. If my mother had gone on the pill a month sooner, I’d never have been born.”

  She stopped, dismayed at the direction in which she’d taken the conversation, but Alastair said he knew what she meant. Every year he dealt with cases involving women like that, who didn’t know the meaning of the word “maternal.” Even though the court hated to separate parent and child, sometimes it was for the best. While he described a recent case, Fiona offered more chicken, more rice; Abigail accepted both.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY SHE AND DARA FOUND JOBS IN A DEPARTment store on Princes Street. Dara had never worked in a store before, but Alastair provided a character reference on his firm’s ivory-colored stationery; at the brief interview Abigail answered all the questions. When they started work a few weeks later, they turned out to be a surprisingly good team. Abigail could dazzle and charm, but Dara was better with the more indecisive customers. She listened carefully and made suggestions: the blue pullover, not the green one, a scarf was safer than gloves. She and Abigail grew adept at knowing who would be best for whom. “My colleague can help you,” they would say, trying not to giggle. Meanwhile Abigail got a second job working four nights a week in a restaurant. She needed to earn as much money as possible before the January lull.

  After the first hectic Saturday at the restaurant, when she was still buzzing from running around, she asked Luke, the bartender, if he wanted to get a drink. Earlier that evening, he’d made a good joke about Bloody Marys, and she liked the way he bit his lip when the orders piled up.

  “I’m not sure if anywhere’s still open,” he said.

  “I was thinking of your place.”

  “Oh,” he said and, for a moment, she thought he was going to turn her down. “That’s a brilliant idea.”

  His flat was ten minutes’ walk away and they spent a pleasant hour in bed. Then Abigail reached for her clothes. Sleepily Luke asked her to stay, but she was not tempted, even for a second, to exchange the clean comfort of Dara’s house for his dingy room, similar to so many she had known. “I’ll come by tomorrow,” she promised, and wrote down his phone number. Back at the house she let herself in quietly. Dara had left on the hall light; a note lay on the stairs:

  Hope you made a ton of money. See you tomorrow. xox D.

  The next morning at breakfast Abigail told Dara about Luke. Dara said she wondered if she knew him. What was his surname?

  “I don’t know. It’s just a holiday thing. I don’t want you to feel you have to take care of me all the time.”

  “You’re the one taking care of me,” said Dara earnestly. Then she announced that her friend Sarah’s parents had asked them to supper that evening.

  “How nice,” said Abigail. As soon as Dara went to take a shower, she telephoned Luke to say she couldn’t make it.

  IN THE NEW YEAR BUSINESS DID SLACKEN BUT NOT FATALLY. THE restaurant, thanks to Luke—he turned out to be the owner’s nephew—kept her on for Fridays and Saturdays, and the store had her and Dara doing inventory. One evening, at Dara’s suggestion, the two of them went to the theater, something that Abigail had done only twice in her life. When she was eight, her grandparents had taken her to Cinderella. Abigail had been intrigued—poor Cinderella doing endless housework and the ball scene was so pretty—but she hadn’t fallen in love. Nor had she a decade later when her English class went to Othello and the stage swarmed with men in baggy tights, brandishing swords and making speeches.

  But Edinburgh was different. Even before the play began, she noticed that there was no curtain and that she was much closer to the stage. Presently the lights dimmed on the audience, and a couple of people, wearing jeans and scruffy jackets, were standing on the stage talking as if they had wandered in off the street. The play was set partly on a Glasgow housing estate and partly on the island of Arran; changes of scene were indicated by a few props or by a shift in the lighting. When the interval came Abigail had to remind herself who she was, where she was. “Are there other plays like this?” she said, meaning this wonderful. Dara consulted the program. “It says here that the playwright is twenty-nine and this is his third play. Do you like it?”

  “It’s fantastic,” said Abigail. “It’s brilliant.”

  Dara smiled and went to buy ice creams.

  Afterward they were having a drink in the theater bar when several of the actors came in, including the hero. “Look,” said Abigail, “there’s Donald. Let’s go and congratulate him.”

  “You go,” said Dara. “I’m going to the loo.”

  Abigail carried over her beer. “Excuse me,” she said, reaching toward Donald’s elbow. “I wanted to tell you, you were fantastic.”

  Donald turned to her with a vivid smile. “Thanks,” he said in a voice quite different from the one he’d used on stage. “I’m Stewart Henderson.”

  Abigail introduced herself and asked if he’d had to work at his accent. What she really wanted to know was what he had done that made you feel as if you had to look at him every second he was on stage, even when he wasn’t talking, or moving. But Stewart was already saying that he had grown up near Aberdeen; his character spoke like the people in his village.

  When Dara came back, she offered her congratulations and surprised Abigail by saying she’d seen Stewart last year, in a play about a factory. “You were great in that too.”

  “What were you thinking when you tipped over your mother’s wheelchair?” Abigail asked.

  “Truthfully?” Stewart smiled. “I was thinking about my bike. I’d only had it six months and I’d bought a super expensive lock. Last week it was nicked from outside the theater.”

  “How did you become an actor?”

  “What is this, an interview?”

  “No. I need to know.”

  Something in her voice or her face must have convinced him. “Okay,” he said. “You can ask me questions for fifteen minutes, then I’m going for supper.”

  Dara moved to leave them alone but Abigail said she had to help her listen. The three of them sat down. She got out a notebook and Stewart talked.

  WHEN THEY RETURNED TO UNIVERSITY THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Abigail arranged to swap rooms so that she would be across the hall from Dara. It was as they were carrying over her boxes of books that she spotted a poster for the Drama Society. She went to the next meeting and found fifteen students debating the spring production. She listened carefully as they threw out titles, trying to figure out where the power lay. Was it with the boy in the black sweater who kept mentioning Beckett? Or with the slightly heavy girl with the intellectual glasses whom everyone deferred to? Or the bearded boy, who simply sat at the table, greeting each suggestion with a little smile or, once, a slow shrug?

  Finally, in the lull following a heated argument about an Irish play, Abigail raised her hand. “I wanted to say that I saw a wonderful play in the holidays by a Scottish playwright. I don’t know the rest of his work but I liked that it was set in Scotland, nowadays.”

  “That’s right,” said the bearded boy, speaking for the first time. “In case some of you haven’t noticed, we are in Scotland. If we’re going to do a contemporary play there’s a lot to be said for acknowledging that rather than trying to fake Irish accents.”

  The evening ended wit
h no clear resolution, but several people, including Abigail, volunteered to research contemporary Scottish plays and bring suggestions to the next meeting. In the bar afterward Abigail managed to insinuate herself between the heavy woman and the bearded boy. She asked Phoebe and Axel the same question she’d asked Stewart: how did people learn to act.

  “God,” said Axel, “mostly in front of their wardrobe mirrors.”

  “The Byre Theater runs workshops,” Phoebe added. “You should look out for those.”

  “I’ll probably be hopeless,” Abigail said, “but I’d like to try.” Axel, she noticed, was smiling sardonically: another starstruck idiot. Phoebe, however, gave her an appraising look as if, dimly, she sensed that Abigail had possibilities.

  OVER THE NEXT SIX MONTHS, EXCEPT FOR THE EASTER VACATION when Abigail took a job at a hotel near the university, she and Dara were inseparable. Night after night they started off working in their separate rooms. Then one of them would appear in the other’s doorway, ostensibly to offer a cup of tea or ask a question about an essay, and soon they would be sitting on the bed, talking. Each of them, they discovered, had had a version of Eden from which she had been expelled, abruptly and irrevocably, at the age of ten. Dara described the summer her father left home, the last camping holiday, how the whole atmosphere of the house changed. Cautiously Abigail asked if he might be gay, but Dara said he’d remarried last year, a woman his own age. “When he says his family now, he means Louise and her children. He never means us.”

  Abigail talked about her parents, how her father loved anything outdoors, boats, climbing, horses, but couldn’t find a way to make a living, and how her mother was a person of a hundred enthusiasms—baking, jewelry making, running a kindergarten, batik, pottery, beekeeping—none of which ever lasted. “They were both always convinced that something wonderful would happen in the next town.”

  “But what you did was incredible,” said Dara. “Moving out when you were fifteen and supporting yourself. I couldn’t have done that.”

  “I had no choice,” said Abigail. “I knew if I ever wanted to have a normal life, I had to leave home.” For the first time since her grandparents died she felt recognized and understood. Later, after they had reluctantly agreed to call it a night, she would lie in bed replaying the back-and-forth of their conversations: Dara advising, listening, consoling, teasing.

  IN FEBRUARY THE DRAMA SOCIETY HELD AUDITIONS—AXEL HAD decided on a play by a young Glasgow writer—and Abigail was chosen for the lead’s sister. From then on her sessions with Dara included going over her lines. Night after night Dara corrected her, asked questions: “Should you sound angry here?” “Why do you shrug when he asks about the baby?”

  On opening night Dara, her mother, and her stepfather were in the third row. “I can shout out your lines if you forget,” she said. “Not that I’ll need to.” Waiting in the wings, Abigail could just make out her rapt face. Then she heard her cue. She stepped into the lights, she said her first line and felt it reach the back of the theater. At last she had entered her proper element.

  Afterward at dinner Fiona, Alastair, and Dara raised their glasses to her.

  “Well done,” said Fiona. “You had us on the edge of our seats.”

  “Magnificent,” said Alastair.

  Abigail feigned modesty—she couldn’t have done it without Dara—but she knew she had been good, almost too good for the rest of the cast.

  The conversation turned to summer plans. Abigail was again applying for jobs at hotels in St. Andrews. “The place I worked at Easter was okay, but waitressing is how you make money. I need to work in a fancy restaurant where Americans give you huge tips after a game of golf.”

  “That sounds a bit grim,” said Alastair.

  “I bet it’ll be fun,” said Fiona. “There’ll be lots of other students working, and St. Andrews is so pretty in the summer. Dara said you might be coming to the Festival.”

  “Touch wood,” said Abigail. “If I get a part, and if I can afford to take time off.”

  “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.” Fiona smiled. Turning to Dara, she said she’d enrolled in a printmaking course at the art college. Maybe Dara would be interested in taking the second session.

  Back at the hall of residence, Abigail said good night first to Alastair and Fiona, then, after a brief, exuberant postmortem, to Dara. Twenty minutes later, unable to sleep, she slipped out of her room and down the stairs. She made her way through the quiet streets to the old stone pier. As she stepped onto the wall the wind tugged at her hair and stung her cheeks; the farther out she walked, the stronger and saltier the air grew. Dickens had been two years older than she was when he had published his first sketch, and described his eyes so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there. Her own eyesight was as keen as ever—she could distinguish the stark ruin of the cathedral and beyond it the headland—but she understood about hiding joy. She stared into the darkness which was not quite darkness and wished that her grandparents could have seen her triumph.

  SOON AFTER ABIGAIL’S DEBUT, DARA TOO FOUND HER VOCATION. A friend had asked her to do a shift at the local Samaritans—no one ever calls, she claimed—but just as Dara sat down the phone rang. In a high, breathless voice, a girl declared that she could see no reason to go on living. “She was ranting away,” Dara told Abigail. “She was plain, she was stupid, her friends were all busy and in love. Her parents had their own lives. No one would even notice if she committed suicide.”

  “Did you ask her if she had a place to live? If she had any money?”

  “I asked if there was anything that cheered her up. Of course she said no, so I started making suggestions: hot buttered toast? The smell of lilacs? A song? A friend who makes you laugh?” After forty minutes the girl had promised to get counseling.

  As Dara spoke, an expression appeared on her face that Abigail had seen when she helped a customer to find the right gift, or when she herself finally mastered a difficult speech. The next week Dara signed up to take the training course at the counseling center. “I’m much better at this than writing essays,” she said. “I love George Eliot but I’ve nothing new to say about her moral sensibility.”

  “I don’t know how you have the patience,” said Abigail. Her own secret belief was that most of the people who came to talk to Dara had money, education, families; they simply needed to pull themselves together.

  “Counseling is short-term,” said Dara. “You seldom see anyone more than a dozen times. Besides each client is different.” She described one of her cases. A first-year girl had briefly dated a local boy who worked in a garage. When he broke up with her, she started stalking him. “She knows she shouldn’t, but she can’t stop hanging around the garage. She’s missing lectures and she’s been late on two essays.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Abigail. “He’s not interested in her, she scarcely knows him, and now she’s messing up her courses to spy on him.”

  “But she thinks he’s the love of her life,” said Dara, as if that phrase answered all objections.

  Abigail shook her head. Romance was another topic about which she often felt hopelessly out of step with her peers, even with Dara. When she’d told her that sleeping with Luke was convenient—“We can go to his flat right after work”—Dara’s lips had tightened in a way that made Abigail wish she’d kept quiet. Sex was about love as far, as Dara was concerned. She wanted Abigail to be in love; she wanted to be in love herself. In their late-night conversations she had talked about her boyfriend, Peter, with whom she’d broken up before coming to St. Andrews. “We weren’t really in love,” she had said as if this were an insurmountable problem. Abigail didn’t understand this complicated way of going about things—What about pleasure? What about being in the present?—but she did understand that her bringing boys back to her room so often upset Dara. “Everything’s easy for you,” Dara had said. “You just look at someone and they want you.” Abigail began to insi
st on going to their rooms instead.

  TWO OF THE HOTELS SHE’D APPLIED TO OFFERED HER A JOB FOR the summer and she was debating between them—one had better hours, the other a more expensive restaurant—when she received a letter on ivory-colored paper. It came from Alastair’s office; indeed it came from Alastair.

  Dear Abigail,

  I have some surprising and, I trust, welcome news. One of my clients is eager to offer support to a young artist at an early stage of his or her career. This would consist of a very modest stipend, to be paid during the university summer vacation, and of free accommodation in a small flat in Edinburgh. Certain duties and conditions would pertain, none I think too onerous. After some discussion with the client, I have been authorized to offer you the situation. Please get in touch at your earliest convenience to let me know if this appeals to you.

  Kind regards, Alastair

  In a daze Abigail wandered out into the street. A light rain was falling and overhead the seagulls were crying. Heedless of both, with neither jacket nor umbrella, she made her way to the hall where she knew Dara was attending a lecture and sat waiting outside. Only Alastair’s dry prose suggested that there was any chance that this was real. As soon as Dara emerged, she drew her over to the window and handed her the letter. Dara read it and looked up with a smile.

  “Brilliant,” she said. “You’ll be spending the summer in Edinburgh rather than slaving in a hotel.”

  “But I’m not a young artist. Why would this happen?”

  “Yes, you are. You’re an actress. I’ve heard Alastair talking about this kind of arrangement. He has wealthy clients who want to do good works but not go through an organization. Last year he got one of them to pay for art courses for a couple of Mum’s pupils. Let’s go and phone him.”

  The stipend turned out to be a hundred pounds a month and the conditions were two: Abigail would use the money to study acting and she would refrain from having overnight guests at the flat. “My client is rather old-fashioned,” said Alastair. “Is this acceptable?”