by Laura Wood
The performance that night is, I think, the best one yet. It’s as if the energy has been building up in all of us for days, waiting for an outlet. The play runs thirty minutes longer because of the breaks we take for laughter and applause. The audience are readily swept up into the giddiness of the performance, hooting and cheering and falling about in their seats.
Out of everyone, Viola stands out as truly extraordinary. From the wings I watch with admiration as she blazes across the stage, holding the audience in the palm of her hand. She has never looked better, never performed better, and when she takes her bows, she glitters with the knowledge of it. Even Alma – good as she is – is a pale shadow in comparison.
I watch her carefully, but I can’t put my finger on what it is that makes Viola so good. She works hard, true, harder than any other member of the company when it comes to rehearsals. I’ve never seen her shirk her responsibilities, whatever Russ has said in the past. I have seen her ask to do something over, and over until it was right. But it’s more than that. It’s as though no one else could play the part once she has made it hers.
It takes Nora and I ages to pack away the costumes and props, and we are the last ones to leave the theatre.
“I’m exhausted,” I groan, when we finally leave the building. “I’m going back to my room. I just want to curl up with my book and fall asleep.”
“Oh, no, you’re not.” Nora takes my arm. “That was the best performance of the whole run, and you can’t avoid everyone for ever.”
“I’m not avoiding everyone,” I mutter. “Just a few people.”
I allow her to tug me towards the pub where the sounds of celebration are spilling out into the street every time someone opens the swing door. I am used to pubs like this now – the kind of bar with a late-night license that doesn’t mind a group of noisy thespians and their various hangers-on. Hot and friendly, with worn leather bar stools, and floors slightly sticky with spilled beer. We make our way inside, and there are the calls of welcome, the jokes, the drinks thrust sloppily into our hands that I have missed these last few days.
It’s nice to have the whole huge, noisy family back together again. Lindsey catches me by the arm and tugs me towards her group, begging for news of our snowbound escapades.
“I heard you had a masked ball!” she says. “Tell us everything!”
“Not quite,” I laugh. “But we did manage a dinner party.”
A voice I recognize, raised above the hubbub of voices, catches my attention. Lindsey rolls her eyes. “Oh Lord,” she says under her breath. “Here we go again.”
“Who is it?” I say.
“Viola,” she says. “Whenever there’s a scene, you can bet she’s at the centre of it. I suppose we were due one – she’s been surprisingly well-behaved this whole tour.”
I crane my head to see, and sure enough, there is Viola. It is as though a spotlight is on her, even in this crowded pub. She stands, poised and elegant, and I realize with a sinking heart that she’s facing Kit. A throng of people are not so subtly watching the drama unfold.
“What’s going on?” I whisper to Nora.
Nora rolls her eyes. “Viola’s about to enact a Cheltenham tragedy again. The way she was onstage, so keyed up – I knew she was spoiling for a fight tonight.”
“Oh, no.” Alma appears at my elbow, distress in her face. “I was afraid of this. Remember what she said? That she’d have Kit back by the end of the tour. Well, here we are.”
“I love you, Kit.” Viola’s voice is carrying. The rest of the room falls quiet, but Viola doesn’t seem to notice. She’s blazing up at Kit. I half-expect to see electric sparks to flash across her skin. She laughs, a slightly giddy laugh. “I know you feel the same. I made a mistake, a bad one, but I can fix it. You know I’m sorry. We need to stop wasting all this time and be together.”
“Vi…” I’ve never seen Kit look so pale. “Please don’t do this here.” He takes a step closer to her. “We’ve talked about this. I’ve said all I had to say.”
She holds up an imperious hand. “You’re saying that you don’t love me, then?” Her tone is derisive, disbelief writ large in every word. It is, I realize, a tremendous performance, for all that the emotion in her voice is real. “But I know you do. I know it!”
Kit’s face is bleak. He scrubs a hand across his eyes in a tired gesture. “Viola,” he tries again in a quiet voice. “Let’s go and talk about this somewhere else. I don’t want to…”
“Just a yes or a no, Kit.” Viola looks at him with challenge in her eyes. The consummate performer, playing to the crowd. And it’s working. You could hear a pin drop in the room. She’s hypnotic.
Kit’s shoulders rise and fall as he takes a deep breath. “No, Viola,” he says gently. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”
For a second she stands there, stunned. “I know I hurt you,” she says in a small voice. “But I apologized. And I need you. You know how much I need you.”
Kit shakes his head. “You don’t need me, Vi. But I’m your friend, you know I’ll always be here for you—”
She turns away, cutting him short, and begins pushing her way through the crowd of people. She comes face to face with me for a moment and her face contorts with rage. “You!” she hisses. Her trembling finger points at me accusingly. “This is all your fault!”
And with that she leaves, slamming out of the door and into the night. The stunned silence holds for another second and then it shatters like a glass against a wall. Everyone is talking. Except for Kit. In the middle of the room, pale and alone, Kit stares towards the door, a look of such devastation on his face that I feel as if my own heart is breaking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The next day, Viola and Kit are all anyone wants to talk about. It appears no one has seen either of them since their showdown at the pub. Kit left straight after Viola, and speculation was rife as to whether he’d gone to find her or not.
Of course, the peaceful night’s sleep I had been looking forward to did not materialize. All night, whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Kit’s face as it had looked when Viola left; so bleak, so helpless. I never thought to see easy-going Kit look that way, and it made something in my stomach clench.
I want to make sure he’s all right, but I’m not even sure where to find him. His bed, apparently, has been slept in, but he was gone before anyone was up. Viola’s door remains locked.
The day limps by, as we prepare for the evening’s performance. We have only tonight in Durham and then two nights in Newcastle before the tour is over. It has gone so quickly, and yet when I think about my life before the tour it seems like the far-distant past – as though that life belonged to a completely different person.
When I set out with the company, six weeks had seemed an awfully long time. But now the questions are creeping in. What will I do afterwards? Will Nora keep me on for the next production? Will my family let me stay? My salary was so meagre that most of it has been spent, a handful of coins at a time, on our evenings out. I have no means to support myself in London – although I suppose Lou might put me up.
That thought is a bad taste in my mouth. When I first arrived in London, I thought nothing of staying with Lou. But things are different now. I have got used to my independence. Our digs may often be horrendous, but I work hard for them and I’m proud of that. I don’t answer to anyone. It’s intoxicating and difficult to think of going back.
And, more than any of that, I have found a place where – finally – I fit. It is even harder to imagine leaving that behind.
I am not the only one in an introspective mood today. Everyone is a little quiet, a bit snappish.
I catch Dan and Russ squabbling over a linen shirt.
“It’s mine!” Dan says.
“No!” Russ exclaims, “Yours is over the chair, there.”
“That’s yours.”
“Boys,” I break in, “you’re acting like children. Give me the shirt.”
Sulkily, Russ hands it ove
r, and I look closely at it, the telltale embroidery on the cuff. “It’s Dan’s,” I say.
Dan makes a triumphant if slightly rude gesture at Russ, who glowers at me. “Of course you’d take his side.”
“It’s not a side, it’s a shirt,” I snap, flushing at this disjointed sentence.
“It always happens at the end of the tour,” Nora says to me later. “Real life starts to impinge once more.”
“That’s just it.” I frown down at the dress I’m mending. “I don’t know what my real life is at all. What am I going back to?”
We’re interrupted then by Miss Meriden, who comes flying into the room, as if the hounds of hell are on her heels, or – at least – at a most un-Miss Meriden like trot.
“Freya!” she exclaims. “There you are! Thank goodness. Viola is ill. She can’t perform tonight.”
I stare at her. “Viola is … ill?” I say slowly. My first thought is of her fight with Kit. Perhaps she can’t face him. I get to my feet. “Has someone checked on her?”
Miss Meriden shakes her head. “She’s refusing to open her bedroom door – says she is too ill to perform. So,” she finishes, “we must get you ready.”
“Get me ready?” I have the feeling that my brain is swimming very hard against an angry current. My knees start to shake.
“For god’s sake, Freya,” Nora says firmly. “Snap out of it! You’re the understudy. You’ll have to perform tonight.”
“Yes,” I say, getting to my feet on such unsteady legs that I stagger slightly. “I need to get ready. To perform.”
“Are you sure you can?” Miss Meriden looks at me uncertainly, no doubt worried about my ability to form complete sentences. “We could cancel the show, I suppose, although it would be an awful shame – it’s going so well. And we had to cancel those performances because of the snow…”
Suddenly, I am calm. Uncannily calm. Ice-cold calm. I shake my head. “We don’t need to cancel. I can do it,” I say. I smile. “Everything is going to be fine.”
“Well … good.” If anything, Miss Meriden is looking at me with even greater concern than before.
“Let me do a quick costume fitting while she’s here,” Nora says. “I’ll ask Lindsey if she or one of the girls can help out as a dresser tonight.”
“All right, and then Mr Cantwell wants her in the theatre manager’s office,” Miss Meriden says, still eyeing me uneasily.
Nora makes a sound of agreement, and I continue to smile serenely. I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am a hollowed-out egg.
I am utterly composed as Nora dresses me and undresses me. She chatters away, a rattle of excitement. We’ll have to alter Viola’s dresses at speed, I am after all a lot rounder than her, and yet I don’t feel worried. In fact, I feel nothing. I had thought I would have a lot of feelings about realizing my lifelong dream of acting on a real stage in front of a real audience, but apparently realizing your lifelong dream only makes you feel numb.
Kit appears at the door, his hair sticking out all over the place, catastrophically wild, worry in his eyes.
“Freya,” he says. “Are you all right about going on? You will be wonderful, I’m sure.”
Curious that this absence of feeling has stretched out to include Kit, I observe. I had been worried about seeing him, there was a lot I wanted to say to him, but, blissfully, none of that matters now.
“I’m fine,” I say a little distantly. “I’m absolutely fine to go on, please don’t worry.”
Kit and Nora exchange a look. Normally that would make me cross, but my reflection in the mirror does not flinch. It remains pale, stoic, unmoved.
The feeling of calm continues while people drop in and out of the dressing room, firing questions, whirring about in a desperate hive of activity.
“Bloody Viola,” Russ grumbles when he comes in to wish me luck. “Typical of her to flake out on us at the last moment. She gets away with murder, that girl.”
“She’s unwell,” Nora says.
“Sure she is,” Russ snorts. “Sick of not getting her own way, and sick on her own drama. Still,” he says, turning his winning smile on me, “it will be fun to be onstage together, won’t it, Freya, my darling?”
I smile and nod. Russ and his behaviour mean nothing to me. I am the eye of the storm.
I suppose this is what it is to be a professional, I think. How nice that I have so instantly become one. This must be what happens when you train for something your whole life.
The feeling of complete serenity continues as I walk down the corridor, and it continues as I knock on the door of the manager’s office. It continues right up until the point when Rhys Cantwell lifts his head and looks me in the eye.
“Oh god,” I moan, promptly falling to my knees and vomiting into the litter bin at my feet.
And now, the numbness passes, and I find I am nothing but feelings. I am a raw nerve, exposed and vulnerable. My teeth are chattering. I crawl into the seat across from Rhys Cantwell and look at him in complete despair.
“I see you are ready for your big break,” he says drily.
“I’m s-sorry,” I manage. “I c-can’t believe I just did that. I was so calm before.” I want to be calm again, I want to feel nothing. Now my mind is full of clamouring, intrusive thoughts – thoughts of falling over onstage, falling off the stage, pushing someone else off the stage. I shudder.
“It’s perfectly normal.” Mr Cantwell presses his hands together on top of the desk. His calm voice dispels the mental image of me accidentally sending Eileen Turner flying into the front row. “Many of the actors I know suffer from stage fright, but they’re all fine once they’re out there.”
“That’s a relief, I suppose,” I say. “And how many of them have actually been sick onstage during a performance?”
“None. Well, not yet anyway.”
I manage a shaky laugh.
“Now, you’ve had plenty of rehearsals, you’ve seen the play a hundred times. You could do this in your sleep.” He is matter-of-fact, not precisely kind, but more reassuring because of it. “Everyone is on your side. The cast and the crew. And the audience. The audience want to like you, so just give them what they want.”
“But I can’t remember my lines,” I say. “I can’t remember a single line.” Panic rises up and I think I might be sick again.
“Dear me, you are smart!” Mr Cantwell says, and it takes me a moment to understand he is feeding me Algernon’s line. The one before my first.
“I am always smart!” I say automatically, in a pathetic, reedy little voice. “Am I not, Mr Worthing?”
“You’re quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.”
“Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.” My voice is firmer now. I take a deep breath.
“You see, it’s all there,” Mr Cantwell says. “It will come easily when you’re onstage. This part is the worst.”
“Did you ever act, sir?” I ask.
“In the beginning.” He smiles. “A long time ago. But it was never really for me. Being onstage isn’t what gets my blood pumping. Working with all the different departments, working with the actors, trying to create a single, beautiful whole out of so many moving parts – that’s the thing I love.” He peers at me over his glasses. “It can be profoundly satisfying, Freya.”
“I’m sure it is,” I say. I realize I have stopped shaking.
“You are looking much less green,” he observes.
“I feel better, thank you.”
“Good, then run along.”
I get to my feet and make my way back to the door.
“And, Freya,” he says. I turn back to face him, my hand resting on the door handle. “Break a leg.”
But, please, god, I think desperately, not literally.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’d love to say that it is a triumph. That I walk on to that stage a nobody from a village in Cornwall and walk off a star. I’d love for that to be tr
ue. But it isn’t.
I was not terrible. I was not even bad. I got my lines right; I stood where I was supposed to stand. The audience laughed. They didn’t laugh the way they laughed at Viola the night before, but they laughed nonetheless. Like Mr Cantwell said, they were eager to be pleased, and I could feel that. I could feel their eagerness and their anticipation. This was a treat for them, and one they were determined to enjoy.
Being onstage in a packed theatre was not like I imagined it. The lights were so bright that the audience became a single, shadowy entity. Before I walked on for my first scene I was shaking so much that Eileen, in her full, and very formidable Lady Bracknell costume, had to support me on her arm.
“Courage, mon brave!” she whispered in my ear. I don’t speak French, but I got the gist.
And then we were there, onstage, and the audience was applauding for Eileen, and I glanced, stricken, at Dan, and he winked, the tiniest of winks, and I pulled my shoulders back and spoke. My voice was loud and steady, though to me it felt as though it was coming from somewhere far away.
I don’t remember all of it. It’s like a dream, shattered and fragmentary, just out of reach. I remember relaxing as the play wore on, I remember being relieved that things seemed to be going all right, that I hadn’t made a horrible mistake, forgotten a line or fallen over. I had seen Viola play the scenes so many times I knew which lines to linger on and which to play for laughs. But I never, not for a single second, felt like Gwendolyn.
What I felt like was Freya, pretending to be Viola, playing Gwendolyn.
I was desperately aware of my self-consciousness. And being aware of one’s self-consciousness is not terribly helpful.
By the time the play finishes I feel like a wrung-out dishcloth. I smile and step forward on Dan’s arm, hearing the applause, and yet I know it is not really for me. I want to tell the audience it’s all right, that I understand, that I did just enough, but I know I didn’t give them what they deserved.
When the curtain finally comes down the others crowd around me, hooting and laughing.