by Hazel Osmond
The kebab tasted sublime to him, that’s when he knew he must be really drunk, and he told himself to mind what he said and be careful what he did, but despite that he let Lisa guide him down an alley and push him against the wall. He looked up and there was the Tyne Bridge, green and huge above him, the lights reflected off the river. Tides of people swept past the end of the alley and Lisa said ‘Here, hold this’ and shoved her kebab into his free hand and got down on her knees and instinct took over and he spread his legs.
‘Get in there,’ someone shouted as they passed and he flung wide his arms and wondered if he looked like some kind of perverted Angel of the North as Lisa undid the button on his jeans and pulled down the zip.
Leaning back he waited for her warm, wet mouth to take him in and make him forget everything: blonde hair, blue eyes, scars, sadness: the lot.
CHAPTER 22
Jennifer pushed open the door of the hall, trying to ignore all the ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ that had been rattling around her brain since Doug had told her he’d taken Matt to the airport to get a flight to Bristol.
Matt had not said why he was gong south, but she’d agreed with Doug’s conclusion that it was another acute case of girlfriend-crisis-itis. Shame that Doug, under intense questioning from Jocelyn, had blabbed that to the whole Drama Club.
Never mind, today he was due back – the first Sunday afternoon rehearsal, the first time without scripts. She would no longer be lurking in the Blue Room, but sitting in the prompt chair. Ringside seat for some serious Matt-watching.
Her eyes went straight to the group of people gathered in a little semicircle and was surprised to see Jocelyn already there: she usually liked to turn up late and make an entrance. The way the others had their chairs angled towards hers suggested she was holding court. Neale, bizarrely, was dressed in his Malvolio costume.
Doug was on his feet, moving quickly towards her and offering to take the skirt and bodice she had draped over her arm. ‘I’ll come through and help you hang them up,’ he said and made a grab for the skirt, fumbled and dropped it.
‘Don’t worry, Doug,’ she said quietly, as he picked it up, ‘first time without scripts is tricky for everyone. You’ll be fine.’
‘Oh, calm down, Doug,’ Jocelyn drawled behind him, ‘Jennifer’s a woman of the world, and she’s not going to be shocked that Matt was out with Lisa on Friday night. Not just out with her, hanging off her. They were so wrapped up in each other they didn’t even notice me.’
‘Guess that answers our questions about how it went with the girlfriend,’ Steve said.
‘Yes, I guess it does,’ Jennifer said. ‘Well … must put that fire on in the Blue Room for Wendy and Lydia.’ She walked, not too quickly, not too slowly, towards the door, opened it carefully and closed it behind her softly.
Before it closed she heard someone say ‘Ah, here he is’ and knew Matt must have arrived. She flicked the switch on the fire and watched the bars go from grey to orange. She hung the skirt and bodice on a coat hanger and added it to the rack of clothes. She ran her hands over the materials and looked at each costume, but she did not touch the brown velvet costume at the end, the one that matched his eyes.
This had always been a script she knew could only be acted a certain way, despite what Cressida had tried to make her believe. Despite that lovely, shining day on the farm.
She hauled the club’s sewing box up on to the table and lifted the lid. The tears were there, she could feel them, just ready to slide.
How had she imagined Matt was different? He had turned out to be just another offering for Lisa. The last few days without him had felt flat and dry, an arid time. Was that what it would be like when he went?
Perhaps she needed to do something about that – ask Cress if she could visit her and sit in the sun, she was always begging her to. Going to a place that prized perfection had scared her before, now it felt like running away. She could do running away.
And today? How could she cope with today? Finlay would have to find someone else to prompt. She could handle Wendy or Lydia, their fighting might be a distraction, but the rest? She selected the largest pair of scissors and went to fetch Jocelyn’s costume from the rail.
Mack pushed open the door to the hall and saw there were already a few in. Neale was wearing his Malvolio costume, unless he’d taken to dressing like a depressed crow.
Mack still felt rough, but at least today he wasn’t praying for death and vomiting on the hour. He was ruddy freezing, though. With his fleece still in some bar in Newcastle, he’d had to walk the hundred-and-fifty-thousand miles to the hall wearing his cord jacket.
‘I went into town with her once, you know,’ Angus said, giving him a conspiratorial nudge as he joined them. ‘Ended up in a police cell.’
Mack heard Jocelyn and Steve laugh. Doug was staring at him in a disconcerting way.
‘Her?’ Mack asked.
Angus clicked his tongue. ‘Nice try, “Her?” Anyway, as I said, ended up in a police cell. Arrested for trying to have sex with a statue. Naked.’
‘You or the statue?’ Steve asked.
‘Bet Matt lost more than his notebook this time,’ Jocelyn said, turning to him.
The ‘her’ they were talking about suddenly made sense.
‘What’s Lisa been saying?’ he asked.
Jocelyn opened her eyes wide. ‘Lisa hasn’t said anything. It was me that saw you both. Very pally you were, I must say.’
Must you really? What a nasty, nosy piece of work you are. O’Dowd would hire you like a shot.
‘So,’ Steve said with a slap to Mack’s back, ‘did she eat you up and spit you out?’
Angus laughed. ‘No, she doesn’t spit. I remember that.’
‘Now, now,’ Doug said and got up and walked away.
Jennifer loosened the stitches holding the Velcro on the waistband of Jocelyn’s skirt. If she did it subtly, the witch wouldn’t notice as she was fastening it up and it would hold together for a few minutes before plummeting floorwards.
She looked at what she was doing, really looked, and put the scissors down. Did she honestly want to disrupt everything, however satisfying the prospect of embarrassing Jocelyn might be? Undo Finlay’s hard work along with those stitches?
She jumped as the door opened and wondered if she’d conjured Finlay up.
‘Jennifer, my love,’ he said, ‘I’m going to go over some of the verse speaking with Neale and Pam; the others are practising their lines with each other. I won’t need you to prompt for about an hour.’
‘I may not be able to prompt at all today,’ Jennifer said, but Finlay had already bounded away. Threading her needle, she began repairing the damage she’d done. She was going to rise above this. She jumped again as Lisa came in.
Please, please do not rub my nose in it. Have him, but spare me the details.
‘I’ve come to try on my outfit. Mam helped me make myself flat-chested before I came out.’ Lisa looked down at a chest that was definitely less perky than usual.
Jennifer nodded and went to fetch the dark-blue doublet and breeches from the clothes rail and the tights from the windowsill and when she came back, wondered whether there wasn’t something less perky about the whole of Lisa today. She watched as Lisa took off her own clothes and slipped on the outfit, helping her to do up the fastenings. As she’d suspected, in her costume, Lisa looked like a sexy page-boy.
‘I think just a bit of tweaking on the shoulders,’ Jennifer said, happy to fuss over such distracting details. ‘Do you want to stand properly, you’re all hunched up?’
Lisa gave a heavy sigh and pulled back her shoulders, but there was still a droop to her stance.
‘Lisa, is there something you’re not happy with about the costume? It doesn’t make you look butch if that’s what you’re thinking. I know Jocelyn said it would. Quite the reverse: I’m more worried you still look like a sexy woman.’
‘Really? Tell that to Mr Writer Man.’ Lisa’s shoulders s
agged some more. ‘No bloody ink in his pen, that’s all I can say.’
Jennifer sat down. ‘I’m sorry?’
Lisa was picking at the material of her sleeve. ‘Bumped into him Friday night by the station, me and a whole group of mates. Seemed a bit down, said it was over with his girlfriend so I thought, “Go for it, Lisa.” Then, well, sorry, Jen, but I was down on my knees—’
‘I don’t want to hear this.’ Jennifer stood up again. ‘Look, come here, let me pin the shoulder seams.’ She reached for the pincushion and roughly pulled out a couple of pins.
‘Nothing to hear. I was about to get started and he was up for it, if you know what I mean, when he suddenly pushed me away. Not nasty like, but it was a definite push, I nearly fell over backwards.’
Jennifer felt a pain in her finger and realised she had stuck one of the pins in it.
‘He apologised really nicely and put me in a taxi and buggered off. Thought he might ring yesterday but he didn’t.’
It felt natural to put her arm around Lisa. How quickly life could turn. Ten minutes ago, it was her feeling like the miserable, rejected one. Cress had been right, she had a habit of allowing her brain to leap ahead and decide something was going to play out badly. He had turned down Lisa. Why had he turned down Lisa?
When the door opened this time, Lisa’s aggrieved sniff told Jennifer that Matt was standing there.
He was pale and slightly more untidy than usual, his hair looking as though he hadn’t brushed it for a while. The dark sweep of stubble down his chin made Jennifer want to discover what it felt like under her palm. His gaze travelled first over her and then Lisa. He frowned.
‘Jennifer,’ he asked, ‘would you mind if I had a quick word with Lisa?’
‘Of course not,’ she said and got herself out of the room as quickly as she could.
Mack was slightly taken aback to see Jennifer’s arm around Lisa’s shoulders and the vision that was Lisa in her doublet and breeches was another surprise, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted. He had to get this right if he was going to undo the damage he’d done on Friday night: one slighted woman, one woman who was looking at him as if she’d never trust him again, a big guy with huge eyebrows who was avoiding him like the plague and one kaput girlfriend who could no longer keep him safe. He couldn’t do much about the last thing, but he had one shot at placating the others.
He began by telling Lisa he was sorry if she felt he’d humiliated her, but letting her carry on would have been wrong.
She looked at him as though he was speaking Martian.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘I wanted it, you wanted it.’
‘I didn’t know what I wanted, Lisa. I’d just split up with my girlfriend and I was confused and drunk. I got carried away.’
‘It was just a blow job, Matt. I give those all—’
Please do not say that, it is well over four months since I had any kind of sex and my groin may burst into flames.
‘Well … um … that’s great if you’re happy with that,’ he blustered, ‘but for me, I like these things to be more private, to mean something more than just a … well, what you said.’
That got a smile out of her. ‘You’re a bit old-fashioned, aren’t you? Makes me fancy you even more.’
A page-boy, that’s what you look like, a particularly sexy pageboy. Oh my God, I’m fancying page-boys.
He shook his head at her. ‘Sorry, Lisa. I like you, but that’s as far as it goes. I’m not in the market for anything else at the moment.’
‘And when you are I expect you’ll be back in Bristol.’
‘Probably.’
‘Soft southern Jessie,’ she said, still twinkling at him. ‘Well, it’s your loss. Getting wankered and having mad sex might be just what you need. Clear the cobwebs away.’
‘I quite like the cobwebs. Sorry.’
He judged that was the moment to leave the room, and went back into the hall. People were looking at him, even if they were pretending not to, and probably wondering what he had been saying to Lisa and whether they’d sent Jennifer out so that they could carry on from where Jocelyn had suggested they’d left off on Friday night.
So, stage two. He caught up with Doug in the kitchen. ‘Look, Doug,’ he said, ‘I’m not about to talk behind Lisa’s back and tell you what actually happened in Newcastle, but trust me, I’m not Angus.’
He didn’t wait to see what Doug’s reaction was, he had to get to Jennifer now, and hope he’d timed it right. Ah yes, Lisa had just come out of the room and Jennifer had gone back in.
She was hanging up Lisa’s costume.
‘Hi,’ she said and he could tell that Lisa had filled her in on the details. Knowing Lisa, she’d have been fairly anatomically correct in her description of how far things had gone. He wished he’d come to his senses before she’d unzipped his flies.
‘Jennifer,’ he said hesitantly, ‘you and Doug are my closest friends up here, and I can’t bear you to think badly of me.’ He paused to make it look as though he was struggling and was then confused to discover that when Jennifer raised her chin and looked at him, he was actually feeling tongue-tied. ‘Uh … what I’m trying to say is that I got a bit carried away with all the drink on Friday after just splitting up with Sonia, and when Lisa seemed a bit hungry and I realised it was for me, I was slow to nip it in the bud and something nearly … nearly happened. The only thing she polished off in the end was her kebab. And mine. But I’m not really making a joke of it. I was an idiot and I feel bad.’
His heart was kicking around in his chest and it seemed supremely important that she say something to show there was not going to be any nasty atmosphere between them over this.
‘There’s no need to feel bad,’ Jennifer said matter-of-factly, ‘you’re a grown-up, you don’t have to explain anything to me. But I am sorry about your girlfriend, it’s a long time to be with anyone and then have it end.’
He made a brave face and retreated back to the hall feeling cheated. Why was that? Because he’d wanted her to be more emotional? No, it was good she was so straightforward about it, wasn’t it? If she’d been frosty or cross it would have suggested she’d been jealous and that was the last thing he wanted to make her.
He should be thankful he’d saved a tricky situation and he wasn’t going to have to explain to O’Dowd how he’d cocked it up.
Nice if Jennifer had looked a bit happier about it though.
He couldn’t stop thinking about that when he was running through his lines: and when Finlay called a halt and they got ready to start acting, he waited for Jennifer to come and prompt, realising he was impatient to see her.
The sweet smile she gave him as she sat down on her chair told him they were still friends, but he wanted that warm, wide smile she was capable of, never mind what it did to that scarring.
He sat and watched the afternoon’s rehearsal as people struggled for words without their scripts, talked over each other and generally kept Finlay and Jennifer busy. They were going straight through, just to see how it went. Badly, Mack felt was going to be the answer to that. While he and Doug were nearly spot-on with their words, the rest hadn’t come on very far in the few rehearsals he’d missed. Angus was the worst and Jennifer more or less read his part for him while he pranced about striking poses.
There were some bright spots: Neale seemed to be hitting his stride with his portrayal of the snobbish Malvolio, although perhaps he’d taken the instruction to look down his nose at Gerry and Steve a little too literally: the audience were going to have a great view of the contents of his nostrils.
Mack knew he kept looking at Jennifer, at her tight-fitting top and skirt with black boots. Graceful even sitting down.
Lisa was on her feet now, still a little sulky, and she started up with the speech where she professes her love for the Duke without him being aware of the true meaning of the words. To Mack it sounded as if she was making a hash of it, and he saw the look that passed between Jennifer and Finlay.
He heard Lisa have a go and it sounded like someone reading a shopping list in comparison.
‘Thanks, Jen,’ Lisa said when she’d finished, ‘didn’t realise you knew the whole play off by heart.’
‘Oh, come on, Lisa, I’m not that sad.’ There was that soft laugh. ‘But I’ve played Viola so often, she’s kind of in my head.’
They took another hour and a half to limp to the end of the play, the fight scene between Mack and Gerry being a particularly low point, when Gerry, unused to any physical exertion, managed to smack Neale in the eye. Neale wasn’t even in the scene, just standing off to one side learning his lines.
Mack didn’t want to think what the fight would be like with swords, even if they were blunt. On second thoughts, maybe he could impale himself on one, and put an end to the whole stinking charade.
CHAPTER 23
Jennifer thought it was probably time to call a halt to what had started off as a bit of light-hearted ribaldry between her and Sheila. Now Lionel was climbing right up on his PC high horse, which was a tricky manoeuvre as he was also trying to order some books online. The woman he was doing it for was not looking amused.
‘It’s complete objectification, that’s all I’m saying.’ Lionel used the mouse from the computer to jab his point into the air.