by Laura Wood
“When I read it, I could see it exactly,” I say to Kit now. “The narrator, suspended slightly above and to one side… She can step into the set at times. Fix herself a drink…” I sketch the scene with my hands.
Kit looks thoughtful. “That could work.”
“It would work,” I say firmly. “She’s amazing. She reminds me a little bit of Nora, but older – cutting, sometimes, but warm with it.”
We’ve been walking back towards the town. I stop suddenly.
“What’s that?” I say. At the top of the cliff, the silhouette of a great building is outlined starkly against the sky.
“Shall we go and have a look?” he asks. “Or are you desperate for something to eat?”
I pat my cloth satchel, into which I placed the pages of his script this morning, alongside several emergency jam sandwiches and a bottle of ginger beer. I knew if it were me, I’d want the first person who read my script to talk about it as soon as possible. “I come prepared. Let’s explore.”
We climb the hill, offering one another the occasional steadying hand. The cliffs above the town are high and steep, and the climb is hard work. Despite the freezing cold I start to feel warm, my cheeks pink with exertion, my breath feathering in little white clouds through the air in front of me. “I’m always scrambling up hilltops at home, but this is a bit of a challenge.”
“You probably don’t do it in such deep snow,” Kit points out, breathing hard.
I stop for a minute and squint out over the view. “I’ve never seen so much snow before!” From here the view towards the beach and the harbour is even more startling. Thin clouds have begun to roll in, draining the sky of that vibrant blue we saw this morning. Now it is a flat, blue-grey, and with the dazzling white of the snowfall, against the slate grey sea makes for a scene curiously bleached of colour. It should be bleak, but the effect is more wild and mysterious.
“Come on,” Kit says. “We’re almost there.”
The last bit of the climb is so steep that I feel my feet sliding from under me several times. On every occasion Kit’s arm is there to catch me, steady, always.
Finally, we crest the hill and I let out an audible gasp. I can tell from Kit’s expression that he’s as startled as I am.
It is the wreck of an old abbey. The scale of the ruin is hard to believe, towering far, far above us, up and into the sky. We walk – the only two people on the planet, it feels like – through the snow and inside what remains of the building.
The remains are skeletal; it is like standing in the belly of a once-great beast. The roof is completely gone, and turning your eyes skywards produces a dizzying feeling of infinity. There are no windows or doors, only enormous spaces where they would once have been. These stone gaps frame the views – across the cliff top, over the water – with all the drama of a magician revealing their trick.
The silence has a quality that I have never known before. A bone-deep kind of peace. In its dilapidated state you can feel even more keenly the scale, the endless work that went into building the abbey.
I’m surprised to find tears blurring my eyes. I don’t know why, only that this place is so beautiful it makes my chest ache. The feeling it gives me is so big, I don’t know what to do with it.
I brush the tears away, the wool of my glove rough against my cheek. I wander off, moving in and around the ruin so that I can look at it from different angles, the gilding of snow only adding to the desolate beauty. Each view is different, revealing new secrets about our surroundings.
Finally, Kit comes to stand beside me. “Beautiful,” he breathes.
“Yes. Yes.”
We find a low wall to perch on and eat our picnic. The heat from the climb has certainly worn off now, and my fingers are cold as I unwrap my sandwich. I quickly realize that a picnic in Yorkshire in December was a trifle optimistic.
“Ginger beer is all very well in the summer,” I grumble through chattering teeth. “But what I wouldn’t give for a nice flask of tea right now.”
“We can’t sit here like this,” Kit says practically. “We’ll freeze.”
“We’ll end up perishing in a tragically beautiful posture, like a pair of doomed lovers,” I agree.
“Found weeks later. Our story will be told for centuries,” he adds.
“Well, that sounds nice. But it’s hard to think about being a tragic romantic heroine when I can’t feel my toes.” I jump to my feet and stomp them a bit, trying to get the feeling to return. “I know!” I exclaim. “We can rehearse your play.”
“My play?”
“Yes, I have it with me in my bag, and I’ve made notes. I hoped we’d get a chance to talk all about it. I can show you what I was thinking. Come on,” I grin, pulling the pages from my bag. “Just read it with me.”
Half-laughing, half-groaning, Kit allows me to drag him to his feet.
I sketch out a rectangle in the middle of the abbey with a stick to represent the stage, then put my hands on Kit’s shoulders and position him.
“You stand here, you see. We’re in a drawing room, a bit old-fashioned, you know – as if there was money once, but it’s gone now. Now go on, you start.”
Kit reads the lines of ones of the lovers, and I read back to him, pausing occasionally to adjust the way we’re standing.
“What about this line here?” He breaks off. “I’m not sure how to play it best.”
“I suppose the question is whether or not he is actually in love with her – or whether he just thinks he is? It will make a difference to the way you play it.”
“I think he loves her,” Kit says quietly. “He just doesn’t know how to tell her.”
“I do too,” I say. “He’s nervous, which is uncomfortable for him. I think if he delivers the line a little more offhand then it will be funnier. Like he doesn’t quite dare say it seriously. Try it again.”
And so it goes on. We work through the first scene, making ourselves laugh, arguing over certain lines, sharing our ideas of how you could make it work. We’re so involved that we don’t notice the voices until they’re on top of us.
“Well, hello, you two.” The unmistakable voice of Eileen Turner greets us, and I swing around to find her walking towards us on the arm of Rhys Cantwell. They are both wrapped up in thick coats, and Eileen has a round fur hat pulled down low on her head.
Do not curtsey, I tell myself sternly.
“It looks like you’re having a good time,” Eileen continues. “True that you can make a stage anywhere, it seems.”
“How did you two get up here?” Kit asks. Like me he is clearly trying to imagine Eileen Turner scaling the cliff face. Perhaps Mr Cantwell carried her on his back like a daring mountaineer. I stifle a wave of laughter.
“We followed the path.” Mr Cantwell gestures across the clifftop towards the top of the town. “It’s not a bad walk, even in this weather. I assume you two climbed up from the beach?”
I wonder if it’s our completely bedraggled appearance that has led him to this conclusion.
“And what are you up to, that has you in such high spirits?” he asks. “We could hear you laughing all the way along the cliff path.”
“We’re acting out Kit’s play,” I blurt out quickly. “It’s completely wonderful, Mr Cantwell. You must read it.”
I hear Kit’s sharp intake of breath at that, and I know I’ve crossed a line. I don’t dare look at him. The play is too good for him to keep it a secret. It needs to be out here, in the sunlight where people can see it.
“We were just working on the first scene,” I say.
“Will you show us?” Eileen asks. It’s not really a question; she knows we’ll bow and scrape as much as she likes, like courtiers before our queen.
I risk a quick glance at Kit and his expression is slightly stunned. “If – if you’d like,” he says uncertainly, his eyes going to Mr Cantwell.
“Yes, show us,” the director agrees, taking a seat on the low stone wall where Kit and I shared our picnic. Ei
leen gives the wall a brief, dubious look but as there is no alternative, she dusts down her thick fur coat and perches gingerly next to him, her back rigidly straight.
I smile reassuringly at Kit, who has gone so pale that his freckles stand out against his skin.
“All right,” he says, collecting himself. “Well, in this scene, the man is in love with the woman, but she has no idea. She thinks he loves her friend, and so their wires get crossed while he tries to bare his soul to her. The narrator comes in when the action freezes and unpicks what’s really going on.”
“She’s sort of world-weary,” I add. “She’s seen it all before and she critiques them as if they’re in a play.”
I don’t suppose that you often know something important is unfolding right in front of you, but that is how it is now. We play out the scene, on our stage set in the ruins, for an audience of two, and it goes over like a dream. Mr Cantwell laughs several times, something I have never seen before up close. The exhilaration of it pours through me, more warming than a tot of brandy.
“Is there more?” Eileen asks, getting to her feet and walking towards us. I rush over to my bag and pull out the carefully tied pages. Eileen takes them from me, her eyes skimming them, an occasional smile pulling at her mouth.
“This is funny,” she says. “What the narrator says here.”
“Freya had a terrific idea about staging the narrator’s scenes,” Kit says then, and I flush.
“Tell me,” Eileen says, quietly passing the pages over to Mr Cantwell to read.
I do, and then, I’m not completely sure how it happens, but the four of us are practising the scene.
“No, no, Mr Cantwell,” I break in at one point. “Wait a beat longer and then turn back – think how funny it will be for the audience. And, Eileen, you must hang back too.”
We only stop when it becomes really too cold to carry on. The sun has slipped precariously low in the sky and the four of us make our way back along the much easier path Eileen and Mr Cantwell arrived by. Kit and I walk side by side. I am still thrilled by what has just happened and I feel – in this golden moment – that everything is perfect.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“It’s gone four already,” Mr Cantwell says, glancing at his watch. “We’ll come back to the theatre with you and speak to the troops.” He sighs. “I don’t like just kicking my heels here like this, but it doesn’t seem we have a choice.”
Over the course of the afternoon I have found I am a lot less intimidated by him. I suppose when you see someone mopping their eyes with laughter then they become a bit less daunting.
“Well, I think it’s a charming place to be stuck,” Eileen muses.
“How is Mr Pennington’s house?” I ask.
“Hubert has been a dear,” says Eileen placidly.
“Yes, because he has a great thumping crush on you,” Mr Cantwell grumbles. “I half-expected the place to be covered in Eileen Turner pictures.”
I flush at that, and Kit flashes me a wicked grin.
“You never can stand it when men prefer me,” Eileen says calmly. “Not that we have so many to fight over these days.” The two of them exchange a sparkling look that makes me absolutely long to sit them down and drag out all their stories.
At the theatre we find Russ and Alma playing cards onstage while Dan lounges, strumming an old guitar beside them.
“There you are!” Alma jumps to her feet. “We were starting to wonder if we should send out a search party for you.”
“We found an abbey up on the cliffs,” I explain, peeling off my gloves and walking over. “And we ran into Mr Cantwell and Eileen.” I don’t mention the rehearsal, or Kit’s play. It feels too precious, like the whole afternoon is a gift I can’t yet bear to share.
“You’re looking very lovely, Freya,” Russ says, glancing up.
“I don’t believe it,” I say. “Unless you have a particular taste for red noses and tangled hair.”
“But I do,” he says lightly. “You look all fresh and healthy, like a girl from the country. I can practically see you now, milking a cow on a picturesque mountainside.”
“I am a girl from the country,” I say. “I’ve milked plenty of cows, and there wasn’t a single picturesque thing about it.”
“Hello, Eileen. How are things staying with Hubert?” Dan asks. “Is he wearying you with his attentions?”
Eileen shakes her head at him. “He’s a delightful man and he’s done us all a huge service,” she says. It seems the grand dame has a bit of a soft spot for the little theatre manager. “I’d love to do something nice for him. He’s been such a good egg.”
“He is certainly as bald as one,” Russ mutters, and Dan makes a snorting sound.
“Well, why don’t we say thank you in style?” Nora’s voice chirps. She has appeared from the wings, with Viola in tow. “Viola and I have a plan.”
“What plan?” Kit asks.
“As we’re stuck here again tonight, we thought perhaps we’d have a party,” Nora says.
“A party?!” several voices echo in astonishment.
Nora nods. “While you were all lazing around, I bravely undertook another visit to the pub where Sophie and I had a chat over a mulled cider or two … or three. To cut a long story short, she’s been slaving away over a hot stove all afternoon to deliver us a rather spectacular indoor picnic.”
“We thought we could have a dinner party on the stage,” Viola says. She comes forward. “There’s plenty of furniture in the props cupboard, and candles and scenery.”
“And costumes!” I exclaim. “Can we make it a costume party? You wouldn’t believe the stuff in their wardrobe department.”
“Excellent,” Nora agrees with a nod. “I will dress you all to perfection; I’ve been dying to get my hands on some of those dresses.”
“There’s the most beautiful apricot silk dress that will look wonderful on you, Viola,” I say. She glances at me, her expression startled and slightly suspicious.
“Wonderful,” Eileen says serenely. “And we can invite Hubert.”
“And Sophie’s coming,” Nora adds. “Quite a supper party.”
I think it’s a relief for everyone to have something to plan after sitting idle, and Nora sweeps Mr Cantwell and Eileen off to help them choose their costumes.
“And we must choose something for Hubert,” Eileen murmurs as they walk away. “I think he’d make a splendid vicar.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask, turning to Kit.
“Revise my first scene,” he says. “It’s not every day you get feedback from Rhys Cantwell and Eileen Turner.”
“It was really good, Kit, truly.”
“Do you think they liked it?”
“Yes, I do. How many times have you seen Mr Cantwell laugh like that?” He flushes at my words. “But don’t go getting a big head about it. And try and remember us little people when you’ve made it, won’t you?”
“Of course I will, you’ll be my leading lady,” Kit says.
I feel something twist in my stomach then, an anxious feeling that I don’t understand.
For once, Kit doesn’t seem to notice my mood, and he wanders off, his brow furrowed, already far away from here, thinking about the changes he wants to make.
I sit and join Russ and Alma’s card game, my mind only half on the cards in my hand. I can’t stop thinking about Kit’s play. It is good – and what a relief! How awful it would be to care about someone so much and to have to tell them their work was bad.
Viola appears at my side. “All right, then,” she says rather gracelessly. “Come and show me this dress you were talking about.”
I scramble to my feet and lead the way towards the wardrobe department. We walk through the theatre in silence and into the backstage area.
When we reach the right door, I knock.
“Wait a minute,” calls Nora. “We’re still finding Hubert the perfect clerical robes.”
We sit in the corridor outside, our
backs pressed up against the wall.
“I want to ask you something,” Viola says, breaking the silence between us. She looks at me and lifts her chin. “Is something going on between you and Kit?”
“Nothing!” I say, relieved at being able to clear this up once and for all. “At least – we are good friends, but romantically, there is nothing going on at all.”
Viola raises her eyebrows is apparent disbelief. “Honestly,” I rush to explain. “The only person I’ve had any kind of romantic anything with is Russ, and that didn’t end up going anywhere.”
“I think Russ likes you,” she says. The unspoken, though who knows why, hangs clearly in the air.
“Russ is just contrary,” I say. “He sees me as a challenge, I think.” I sigh. “Our evening was nice enough, but it wasn’t the stuff of dreams. I was hoping for proper romance, like in books.”
Viola looks at me curiously. “What do you mean?”
“Well, all the melodrama. Not being able to tear yourself away from one another, and high passions, and tragic pining and not being able to sleep or eat. No one I’ve met has so much as made me want to miss lunch. Certainly not Kit… most of the time we eat together.”
“Hmmm,” Viola sniffs. “I’ve had my fair share of melodrama, and it’s not all fun and games.”
“With Kit?” I ask.
“I suppose,” she sighs. “When I broke it off with him I know that I hurt him, and I feel badly about that. I thought he understood, but…” She trails off then and gives a little sigh of frustration. “I’m not worried about Kit anyway, not really. He and I will get back together eventually. It’s just – these small, provincial tours make me wild. I want to get out.”