One Winter's Night (Kelsey Anderson)

by Kiley Dunbar

  ‘Packet of pork scratchings please, love,’ a tourist was asking, bringing her round from her reverie.

  ‘Kenneth, can you show me how to work the till please?’ Mirren asked in a small voice as the pre-theatre crowds began to pour in and she lost herself in the sudden rush and clamour, all thoughts of her old career banished.

  * * *

  ‘It’s you!’ the voice exclaimed from the end of the bar. Mirren barely registered it. It was ten minutes until last orders and she was looking forward to ringing the brass bell for the first time. The hours had flown by in a noisy blur of orders shouted out across the hubbub, mixer bottle tops clanking into the pail below the bar, bubbling optics and overflowing froth – and she’d actually enjoyed it. Her feet ached even in her flat boots, but there were tips in the jar, happy punters talking loudly and huddling together, full bellies, and empty plates being cleared away by the kitchen staff.

  She glanced over to find Adrian smiling, learning with his arms crossed on the bar.

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye open for you all over town,’ he said. ‘Should have known the Yorick would snap you up. You doing OK?’

  ‘I’m good actually.’ She was surprised to find she meant it too. ‘Why were you looking for me?’ She took the opportunity of a lull in orders to wipe her cloth along the bar towards him. ‘Drink?’

  ‘What are you having?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing, I’m working.’

  ‘OK, what would you notionally be having if you weren’t working? JD and Coke, right?’

  She hid her surprise about him remembering, telling herself this was the oldest trick in the chat-up line book; remembering a small detail about a girl and hoping her self-esteem’s so low she’ll be bowled over. Not anymore, she thought. Bet he can’t even remember my name by now. ‘Is that what you want? Jack Daniels?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure, and have one for yourself after work, Mirren.’

  Anyone can remember a name. What of it? ‘No, I’m good, thanks.’

  Kenneth had told her to always accept the offer of a drink and to put the money in the jar for splitting with the team and she had been saying yes all evening but nothing could induce her to accept in this instance. Perhaps if he wasn’t looking at her like that, with the wolfish smile and something daring in his eyes that her very blood cells responded to…

  She worked the optic and handed him his drink, followed by the card machine. He was shaking his head and blowing an exasperated breath as he paid up.

  ‘Wish I hadn’t bothered now,’ he said in a wry tone.

  ‘Bothered with what?’

  ‘Asking Mr Ferdinand if he’d see you.’

  She glanced around, hoping Kenneth wasn’t in earshot. Luckily he was wiping today’s specials from the board. ‘Mr Ferdinand? What did he say?’ she asked surreptitiously, fiddling with the plastic drink stirrers in the jar, still trying to be aloof.

  ‘December the first, lunchtime, you’ve got ten minutes.’

  ‘Really? Oh my God,’ she gasped and watched his mouth twitch in response. Mirren regretted her broad smile instantly. That was exactly the kind of thing that gave men the wrong idea; what Mr Angus would call ‘letting your overactive love life interfere with your professionalism’. She rearranged her face into something more neutral. ‘I mean, that’s very kind of you, thank you.’

  Adrian was still smiling, charitably under the circumstances. ‘Look, I don’t meet many reporters around town. You seem like a good person, even if you are prickly as hell.’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘We should be friends.’

  She drew her neck back at his bluntness. Mirren was ready to speak but he knew what was coming, another knock-back.

  ‘Hear me out. It would be nice to talk shop with someone in the same line of work, you know, as friends and hopefully future colleagues. If you impress Ferdinand and convince him to bring you on board you’d be doing me a huge favour. Sometimes working alone with him is frustrating. All the time, in fact.’ His expression was so open, it was hard to rebuff.

  ‘Friends?’ she said, in spite of her brain screaming for caution.

  ‘Nothing more. I told you I’m taking a break from dating too after—’

  Mirren flinched at the bell ringing loudly behind her and turned upon Kenneth. ‘I was looking forward to ringing that! Isn’t it the new barmaid’s rite of passage?’

  She was met with a staid look from dour old Kenneth. ‘You’ll have a thousand more shifts to ring the bell, Mirren.’ Then he called across the room, ‘Last orders please.’

  Mirren met Adrian’s eyes and she knew he understood her thoughts. A thousand more shifts? She hoped not, and so did he.

  Mirren was still thinking about Adrian’s single status and what might have brought it about when a booming voice called over the crowd: ‘One for the road if you don’t mind, my lovely,’ and both Mirren and Adrian knew who it was.

  ‘That old Lothario’s always in here,’ Adrian complained, seeing the actor who’d doused him in beer.

  ‘That’s my favourite customer you’re talking about,’ replied Mirren sotto voce as she waved and pulled his drinks, always the same thing, she’d learned – a pint of ale, and a glass of Spanish sherry which he referred to as ‘sack’. The request had confounded her at first, but Kenneth had nodded to a bottle on the shelf saying, ‘That’s his; only one that drinks it. I bring it in special from Malaga, just for him.’

  Adrian was glowering at the old fellow through narrowed eyes.

  ‘What have you got against him?’ Mirren whispered. ‘He’s lonely, that’s all. So what if he’s a bit… boisterous? I’m sure half his stories are made up but he’s entertaining when you get to know him. He’s got no family, you know…’

  ‘Oh, it’s all true,’ Adrian interrupted. ‘He’s a big star round here. Well he was. An old-guard luvvie. He was in loads of seventies sci-fi too, even Star Wars.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah, don’t you recognise him?’

  Mirren plumped a lip. ‘Nope.’ She was aware of Adrian’s critical glances as she gave the old man his drinks and took his money which he picked out in coins from a little leather purse like her late grandfather had. That wasn’t the only thing about the old man that reminded Mirren of her grandfather. The beard, the jolly round cheeks and his twinkling eyes took her back to happy days as a child when her mum’s father had wrapped them both up in his love and devotion. Happier days, when her mum wasn’t wracked with addiction and her dad still lived at home. But she didn’t want to think about that.

  As soon as she could, she was back beside Adrian. ‘You’ll strain your face gurning at the poor old fellow like that. Seriously, what’s wrong with you?’

  Adrian said nothing, drained his drink and made ready to leave. ‘Twelve o’clock on Tuesday the first, remember? Don’t be late, you might keep Ferdinand from his lunchtime nap.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  He nodded, pulling his black jacket on and flattening his hair under a black peaked cap that framed his dark brows and cheekbones in a way that made Mirren want to sigh.

  ‘Adrian?’ Their eyes met for a beat she wished she could sustain. ‘Thank you. I mean it. You’re a good friend.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ The flash of his teeth in a stunningly squared smile called to a traitorous place inside her and she fought to control muscle and nerve telling her to smile back, to lean across the bar and reach for his lapel, to speak to him in a low voice about wanting him. The old Mirren would have done all these things, but thankfully her resistance wasn’t put to the test because he was suddenly gone, leaving her watching in his wake as the crowds parted to let him pass then closed in again.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

  Against the wrackful siege of battering days,

  When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

  Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?’

  (Sonnet 65)

 
The courier van had only just pulled away from St. Ninian’s but Kelsey was already cross-legged on her bed pushing aside the clutter of books and catalogues all explaining the finer points of curating photographic exhibitions which she’d spent the morning poring over. She tore at the cardboard packages and pulled free the large glossy prints in their protective cellophane.

  It had taken days for her collection of negatives and contact strips to arrive from her mum in Scotland and then she’d gone through the careful process of selecting the perfect images to send to the developers. She wouldn’t let herself think about how much it had cost; it was an unavoidable expense and an investment in her business. These images wouldn’t just be displayed in her new floating gallery; they’d be on sale too. The shots had to be perfect, and they were.

  Every photographer has one; a list of those stand-out images where their skill, the lighting conditions and their subject come together to create something magical, the very best examples of their craft stretching back years. Kelsey had drawn her greatest hits together for the first time and the sight of them in her hands now made her heart soar.

  The first out the packaging were old images from the only other exhibition she’d taken part in, back when she was in the university camera society, back when she had a group of happy, creative mates endlessly talking about f-stops, film-processing and double exposures, way back before she met Fran and let all her dreams slide, prioritising instead his ambitions.

  These Scottish semi-rural landscapes, taken ten years ago now, captured where she was from, the very heart of her. A fisherman repairing his nets on the quayside near Mirren and Preston’s old flat; shining, striped mackerel in their iced trays fresh off the morning boats on the Firth; a combine harvester in the fields throwing dust and chaff into a clear August sky with the ruins of the Victorian pit head in the far distance. Then there was a black and white shot of a younger version of her mum standing in her kitchen behind Grandad in the chair, a towel around his shoulders, having his hair cut. Another taken in the little ice cream parlour at North Berwick she’d visited with her grandparents, the flavours laid out in their tubs like a pastel paint palette. Looking at it now she could almost taste the mint choc chip ice cream and feel the summer sun making it melt in her cone.

  Photographs could always do that for her; send her right back to the moment they were taken, preserved forever. A lens makes everyone a traveller in time.

  She was looking now at a shot of Mari pushing Calum in his buggy outside John Menzies on Princes Street and could swear she detected her mum’s Chanel No. 5, and somehow this shot of Mirren’s back as she looked out over Edinburgh castle ramparts had conjured up the distinctive smells of roasted malt from the North British Distillery and the smoke from the castle’s one o’clock gun.

  She peered closely at another familiar old image and smiled; a picture of an English garden. She’d only ever seen the photo in nineties’ five-by-four gloss but as a ten-inch matt enlargement she noticed for the first time the slightest blurring at its furthest depths. It was hardly surprising it wasn’t perfectly focused, since this was the very first shot she ever took, with her dad’s camera, under his instruction, standing peering over the hedge at the boundary of Shakespeare’s birthplace as a thirteen-year-old Anglophile, already lost to the romance of theatre and history and, unbeknown to her, about to become a vintage camera enthusiast.

  Her father wasn’t in the picture, he wasn’t in any of the exhibition shots in fact, but he was present in every single depression of the shutter button and in the very light itself as it worked in chemical reaction upon sensitive film. All of these early pictures recorded her love for him and how it was the very makings of her.

  Then there were the newer ones. Confetti thrown in the air against a blue sky at Norma’s wedding, abstract and colourful. A number of pictures of Blythe from the day they met, her violet eyes contrasting wonderfully with her white hair and the pink paper flower at her ear. Kelsey knew these would look just right hung alongside the headshot of Jonathan in silky monochrome which she stalled over now, wanting to press her fingertips to his accent mark eyebrows and the strong lines of his temples and jaw.

  She grabbed for her phone and typed.

  Only twenty-three sleeps! I’ll be opening the first door on the studio advent calendar tomorrow. I can’t wait to see you! Not long now. I love you, x

  Off flew the words into the ether. Even though she was missing Jonathan, she knew how to love someone she couldn’t see every day; her dad had taught her a little about that.

  Just as she was opening another text box to send a chaser of a love heart emoji, she heard Mirren’s knock on the door. Actually, it was more of a kick somewhere near ground level.

  ‘Coming! Don’t you have your key?’ Kelsey called. It had been two days since they’d seen each other, Mirren was so busy at the Yorick and had seemingly settled in to the barge’s living quarters very happily indeed. The tension of being cooped up together was long forgotten now they each had a little more space and a lot more privacy. Kelsey greeted her with a grin as she let Mirren in. ‘Woah, what’s all this?’

  Mirren’s arms were piled with books and two carrier bags swung from her wrists. Only her eyes showed over the load.

  ‘I met your neighbour at last. Blythe? She gave me these. Said she was having a clear out and thought you’d like them. She also made me down a shot of eighty proof alcohol that tasted like hand sanitiser and hedgerow.’

  ‘That’s Blythe for you.’ Kelsey rescued the books and piled them on the floor, then safely packed away the exhibition photographs from the bed, keeping only Jonathan’s head shot out and placing it on top of the pile.

  ‘And I got us some dinner,’ Mirren was saying, emptying the carrier bags of the two portions of bangers and mash with onion gravy in their foil containers which Kenneth had given her from the kitchens, along with a shiraz to celebrate her joining the team and in honour of her first pay cheque. ‘These were on the house. Maybe my new boss isn’t so bad after all.’

  Mirren set about reheating the food and pouring the drinks while Kelsey sorted through the books, fascinated.

  ‘Nice one, Mirr!’ She smacked her lips approvingly at the takeaway. ‘So… Blythe didn’t want any of these books?’

  ‘Nope. When I let myself in she was peering through the chain at her flat door; she must have been watching for someone passing. She said she knew you’d appreciate some of the Shakespeare text books, and there’s some old acting handbooks too…’

  ‘Ooh, perfect Christmas presents for Jonathan.’

  ‘I thought that, and that one’s on theatrical costume design…’

  ‘I could give that to Myrtle and Valeria for their shop!’

  ‘And she practically threw that one there out the door.’

  ‘What, this one?’ Kelsey held up the slim volume, reading aloud the title. ‘An Actor’s Life by John Wagstaff.’ The inside jacket told her it was one of a one-hundred-copy print run from a small local press, probably long since defunct. ‘I’m not surprised she didn’t want to keep this one. Seeing it must bring back bad memories for her.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Mirren was busy finding cutlery.

  ‘This guy, John Wagstaff, was mentioned in her newspaper article. He was her co-star and got so drunk before the opening night of Cleopatra he fell off the stage and broke his legs, ruined the run for everyone, and if my instincts are right, that’s not all he ruined.’

  Mirren handed Kelsey a wine glass. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ she lowered her voice as if somehow Blythe could have made it up two flights of stairs and was listening at the door. ‘Blythe had a baby and the theatre bosses didn’t like her being an unmarried mum. Eventually they pushed her out of the company, ruined her career. I reckon the daddy was this guy.’

  ‘Old scoundrel, let’s have a look at him.’ Mirren flicked through the illustrations while the microwave droned from the corner. The cover didn’t give much away, featuring only
a drawing of the comedy and tragedy masks, but inside there were black and white pictures of the man at work. ‘Tights, codpieces, the usual stuff…’ Mirren said as she flicked. ‘Oh, hold on, there’s his face… God, he’s gorgeous! Nice one, Blythe!’

  ‘Pass it here,’ Kelsey took the book and studied the images, turning the pages with increasingly quick flicks. ‘That is so spooky.’

  Mirren began serving the steaming food onto plates. ‘What is?’

  ‘Look at him! He’s the double of Jonathan.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Mirren peered over. ‘That is a bit weird.’

  Kelsey couldn’t push the images from her mind as she and Mirren sat together on the bed, eating quietly. Throughout the meal she kept returning to the book, flipping its foxed pages until she came across a head shot that made her stomach convulse. The heading told her it was taken in nineteen sixty-eight and that Wagstaff was pictured in his stage make-up for Antony and Cleopatra. Kelsey reached for Jonathan’s headshot and compared the two for a long while.

  ‘Mirren?’ Kelsey’s tone was ominous. ‘Did I ever tell you the story of Jonathan’s dad?’

  ‘Umm, not really… I remember you saying he doesn’t know who he is.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Kelsey said. ‘I mean, his mum knows, obviously, but out of respect for her and his stepdad Jonathan never wanted to know anything about him, not even his name. He said his mum tried to tell him when he was a teenager but he couldn’t stand it. You know, his mum’s story is strikingly similar to the one Blythe told me, now I think about it.’

  ‘Spill.’ Mirren’s lips curled over the rim of her glass and her eyes crinkled. She was enjoying this.

  ‘Jonathan’s really private about this kind of stuff, and Blythe probably believed she was telling me in confidence. You won’t repeat it to anyone, will you?’

  ‘Kelse, I’ve got nobody to tell.’