One Winter's Night (Kelsey Anderson)

by Kiley Dunbar

  ‘It’s not there!’ Mirren called out. ‘Look!’ She turned the pages roughly. ‘Nothing, see? There’s only this.’ She turned to the theatre pages and showed Kelsey.

  The Oklahoma Renaissance Players are set to make a triumphant return to Stratford with Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost following their sell-out run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in town last summer and a reportedly triumphant Hamlet in Ontario over the autumn. Jonathan Hathaway, the company’s male lead will take the role of Berowne starring alongside Peony Brown as Rosaline. This run will be Hathaway’s last with the company as he steps down to pursue roles in English theatre. He’ll be replaced in June by his current understudy, local boy William Greville. The Examiner will be at the play’s opening performance in April which coincides with The Players’ Pageant: a one-hundred actor-strong procession through town from the train station to the main theatres on riverside in a spectacle of costume and song not seen in town since the heyday of acting companies arriving by steam train for the spring season to great fanfare and crowds. The Players’ Pageant is the vision of main theatre artistic director…

  Kelsey let the paper fold, her eyes wide with astonishment. ‘And so it goes on. No mention of Wagstaff and Olivia at all.’

  The pair thought this called for a modest celebration and Kelsey had just made the tea and was talking about how maybe it was actually all over and Adrian had done the right thing, saving Olivia Hathaway from a news scandal, when the pinging notification sounded on Mirren’s phone.

  ‘It’s Adrian,’ Mirren shrugged. She read the message aloud:

  I’ve been trying to call but you won’t answer your phone. I hardly know how to say this. The memory stick wasn’t there when I returned to the office after we spoke the other day. I’ve been searching everywhere for it. I’ve turned the Examiner building over and trawled the streets in case I somehow dropped it. I even asked Ferdinand if he’s seen it, but no luck. I’ll keep looking. I’m sorry. I wish you’d talk to me. A.

  Kelsey sighed loudly and slumped with her mug on the gallery room floor, looking up at Jonathan’s picture in its frame. ‘I’ll have to let Jonathan know about this too. I thought if I kept being honest with him about what was happening here and gave him time to think, he’d eventually call, but this… this’ll be the end as far as he’s concerned. That information’s still out there, anyone could have it and we’re at their mercy. We just have to wait and see where it turns up. How is Jonathan supposed to endure that?’

  ‘Or,’ Mirren chipped in, ‘Adrian’s refusing to give the story up just yet and he’s come up with this cock and bull tale while he gathers more information – or maybe he’s trying to pitch it to the tabloids, get himself a nice deal? He did say the Examiner was likely to fold this year and he’d be reassigned to some other provincial paper. He won’t want that. This is his chance to make it big with a gossip rag.’

  Kelsey reached for her phone and dialled Jonathan’s number ready to break the news. On the other side of the world his phone rang, sending Kelsey straight to voicemail, just as she’d predicted.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ‘Winter’s not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way’

  (King Lear)

  January got off to a busy start in Stratford. Kelsey staved off the ache in her heart, reminding herself of Blythe’s words of encouragement about not give up hope that Jonathan would come round.

  In her determination not to mope, she had thrown herself into getting the exhibition invitations printed and sent out. She’d invited all the local papers to the grand opening too – except the Examiner, of course. She’d even invited the Mayor and a few other important local dignitaries. With Valentine’s Day falling on a Sunday this year, she couldn’t be sure any of them would want to commit to trudging through wintry weather to look at an exhibition on an old boat, but she tried to think positively.

  The cava was already on order from the Yorick, as was the loan of fifty champagne flutes thanks to Kenneth – an ambitious number since only her family and friends had actually RSVP’d so far.

  She hadn’t heard if Jonathan’s invite made it safely to LA and she fought hard to stifle the sickening fear that kept threatening to overwhelm her; the fear that Jonathan wouldn’t be coming back to Stratford for Valentine’s Day at all. After all, the only reason he’d planned his flying visit was to see her. Kelsey didn’t even know if he’d booked his flights before Christmas, back when all their plans for their shared future seemed so simple and certain.

  One consolation was that Blythe hadn’t flatly refused to attend the gallery opening. Kelsey had asked if she’d be the guest of honour and cut the great big cake which she’d ordered in a fit of what-the-hell-you-only-launch-a-business-venture-once recklessness and Blythe had looked sorely tempted, even if she did rub her hip and grit her teeth at the thought of leaving the house.

  ‘I’ll think about it, dear, I really will,’ she’d said with a glint in her eye that made Kelsey buzz with excitement, even though her heart still hung heavy in her chest for Jonathan. Blythe had read her mind and told her never to give up. She may even have quoted Winston Churchill, actually. Kelsey couldn’t quite remember now as they were steadily nearing the bottom of one of Blythe’s homemade gin bottles at the time and what had started as a New Year snifter had ended in Kelsey ordering them both a Deliveroo of fish and chips which they devoured while watching re-runs of Murder, She Wrote – Blythe telling her dated gossip about the actors on screen who she used to rub shoulders with.

  With Blythe’s friendship and the hard work of bringing the exhibition to fruition Kelsey somehow made it through those first long days of the New Year where the lustre of Christmas has already faded, the decorations are being packed away and everyone’s tired, broke and overfed.

  Just as she was thinking her fortitude was stretched to its very limits, her mobile rang one day while she was at the outdoor market paying for a long roll of red ribbon for the Mayor to cut – if she showed up at the launch. She lifted the phone to her ear without even checking the caller ID, sure it would be Mirren or Mari asking her if she’d remembered to eat that morning and fussing again about her being pale and tired looking. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kelsey?’ a tentative, deep voice asked, and her heart leapt at the sound.

  ‘Jonathan!’

  ‘Listen… I… I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls for so long.’

  ‘That’s OK, I’m just glad you’re doing it now.’ Kelsey was already prepared to make any concession, grovel any apology, make every promise that she’d shape up in the future, just so long as he gave her another chance, but Jonathan cut her off.

  ‘I was a mess for a while. I couldn’t take it all in, and I felt betrayed and lost and…’

  ‘I know and I’m sorry,’ she said with a plea in her voice.

  ‘Don’t say sorry. I’m sorry. You were trying to help me, I know that. I just wasn’t ready for it, at least I didn’t think I was, and all I could think about was Mom and what she would think.’

  He paused at the sound of Kelsey weeping, as she made her way from the busy marketplace and tried to hide behind the clock tower – the one everybody calls the American fountain – where the shoppers couldn’t see her tears.

  ‘Mom was horrified the media might rake up her private life, in fact, I’d say she still is, but I think it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, in a way,’ he said softly.

  ‘How could it be?’

  ‘Well, knowing that there might be an article coming out in the press I had to talk with Mom and Art, and actually… it was OK. We spoke about all the stuff I shoulda let Mom say years ago. I think it really helped us. It certainly helped me. Mom was upset, real upset, talking about it after all this time, and she’s still nervous about what the press will say, if it ever comes out, but maybe I should be thanking you and Mirren for helping us talk as a family, getting it all out in the open.’

  ‘Jonathan, I’m so glad for you all.’

 
; ‘It was Peony that put me up to it at first. She was kinda pissed at me for taking so long to wake up to the fact I needed to just talk with Mom about it. She gave me one of her famous lectures. It was fearsome! And she kept threatening to call you on my behalf to tell you I was being a… how did she put it? Oh, yeah, “a complete tool”.’

  They both laughed at this and a pigeon on the fountain took flight in surprise.

  Kelsey took the opportunity to ask the question she was dying to know the answer to. ‘So what about Wagstaff?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The word was hard and blunt.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘He doesn’t interest me right now. I have a long way to go before I know what to feel about him, OK? And seeing Mom so cut up about him all over again, it was tough.’

  ‘OK. I won’t say anything else about it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did about your dad either, that wasn’t fair. I’m sorry for that too. I know you wanted me to meet with that old actor, but that’s a step too far.’

  ‘I get it.’

  ‘You know, it looks like that Adrian guy’s telling the truth? He’d have run the story by now if he didn’t want anyone to beat him to it, don’t you think?’

  Kelsey didn’t like to say she wasn’t at all sure so she tried to agree and sound as positive as she could for Jonathan’s sake.

  ‘So… if you can, I just wanna forget all about it?’ he said, a note of entreaty in his voice. ‘Can you forgive me for flying off the handle like that and then taking so long hurting over it all?’

  ‘Of course I can. I already did.’

  ‘No more secrets?’ he said.

  ‘No more secrets, I promise.’ She rummaged for a tissue in her pocket. ‘Are you… I mean, will you please come to the exhibition launch next month?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  Just like that, Kelsey could exhale the breath she’d held since Christmas and she danced in the frosty market place in the shadow of the fountain for all of Stratford to see.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ‘Forgive me, Valentine. If hearty sorrow

  Be a sufficient ransom for offence,

  I tender’t here. I do as truly suffer

  As e’er I did commit’

  (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

  All across the broad expanse of the theatre gardens leading to the marina the grass was muddy after weeks of frosty nights and rainy afternoons. In the flowerbeds the first snowdrops and narcissi drooped their heads, mirroring the white winter sky over Kelsey’s barge. Valentine’s Day had come at last.

  Mirren had been sure to lock the doors leading to her little living area at the back of the boat and Kelsey had given the exhibition one last assessing look-over. She checked one last time that her phone was charged up and the credit card processing app was installed on it correctly – on the off chance of any launch-day buyers.

  All the framed photographs were marked with price stickers, and Mirren had been given a sheet of little red dot stickers to place in the top corner of anything that sold. Kelsey had proudly put out the A-frame – once a sign advertising the Norma Arden Guided Tours Agency and now freshly painted and bearing Kelsey’s business details.

  Gallery: OPEN

  Tuesday to Sunday 10am–5pm

  Photo portrait commissions available at the town centre studio.

  The job advert for a part-time gallery assistant was already in the Stratford Observer and Kelsey was to interview applicants next week. In the meantime, Mirren – when she wasn’t pulling pints at the Yorick – and Kelsey would somehow have to manage staffing the gallery between them. The studio had certainly been quieter for most of January but Kelsey was looking forward to the school photography sessions she had booked for the spring and word had slowly made its way around town about the increasingly popular new-born photo shoots in her cosy studio.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Mirren asked.

  ‘We should have got some nibbles or canapes or something, shouldn’t we? Too late now, I suppose. Is this dress all right? Not too arty, is it?’ Kelsey thrust her hands into the big grey pockets of her new linen pinafore dress which tied in front of her shoulders in two tight knots. ‘This collar is choking me.’ She pushed a nervous finger into the high, delicately frilled neck of her white blouse and gulped.

  ‘You look perfect. You’re Kelsey Anderson, photographer and gallery owner.’

  ‘We’re doing this then?’

  ‘Well, we could haul anchor and putter away up the river Avon but then you’d never see Jonathan, would you?’

  ‘You’re right, you’re right.’ Kelsey flustered over the business cards she’d arranged and rearranged in a fan on the barge’s open side-hatch umpteen times that morning. ‘It’s cold in here with the hatch and the door open. Is that little heater working?’

  ‘It’s fine, and everyone will be wearing their coats anyway. Kelsey, get outside on that red carpet, grab a glass of bubbly, down it, and greet your guests. They’ll be here any minute.’ Mirren’s expression was firm. She’d put on her best black work suit and red lipstick to support her friend. Kelsey had told her she looked like a sexy bodyguard and Mirren had grinned and said, ‘Accurate.’

  After an entirely unnecessary tidy of her new range of birthday cards – printed with her pretty local landscapes and all priced up in their cellophane wrappers – Kelsey wobbled down the gangplank and onto the red carpet over the pavement. She’d wangled the carpet from Myrtle and Valeria’s hire shop and she’d already booked it again, ten months in advance, for this December’s costumed photo booth, which she’d been sure to firm up again with the Osprey Hotel since the corporate Christmas party shoots had turned out to be so lucrative this winter.

  There were taxis already pulling up on the roadside and she strained her eyes across the broad marina to make out who was arriving first. Following Mirren’s orders, she snatched a glass of bubbly from the silver tray which Blythe had let her borrow for the occasion. The cold cava made her shiver all the more, and she hoped it would stop her hands shaking.

  Jonathan was on his way direct from the airport. Any minute now, traffic permitting, he’d be here. Could they recapture the happiness they’d felt at Christmas, she worried? Their video chats and phone calls had told her that, yes, it might be possible. They’d relaxed into their easy way of talking almost instantly after Jonathan made the first step of reconciliation in the New Year and they hadn’t fought again, but still she wanted to be completely sure. She couldn’t truly assess any damage she’d done until she could look him in the eyes, hold him properly and kiss him. Only then would she know if they’d get through this.

  There was a new worry troubling her, something still unspoken between the two of them and she had no idea if Jonathan was thinking about it too. The ring.

  She’d hidden it away back at the bedsit and despite brainstorming with Mirren about what to do for the best, they’d drawn a blank. Jonathan hadn’t mentioned it at all so she could only assume he thought he’d lost it somewhere in the hire car or on the airplane when he was beating a hasty retreat from her on Boxing Day. Keeping the ring safe was all she could do, for now. The proposal was supposed to have been Jonathan’s surprise. She wasn’t supposed to know anything about it. Only he could bring up the topic, and so far, he’d not uttered a word. No doubt he’d changed his mind since she shook his trust in her and Kelsey was learning to accept the fact he may never fully recover it enough to think of asking her again.

  Her thoughts were cut off by the realisation that: one, her glass was empty, and two, there was a tall, grinning American in baseball boots, black jeans and a big black coat running across the marina towards her and he was brandishing a bunch of Valentine’s roses.

  Jonathan had laid the flowers aside and scooped her up in his arms in a second, spinning her round and pressing a kiss to her lips that stole her breath away. All her nerves dissolved against the warmth of his solid body.

  ‘Ahem! Hate to i
nterrupt you two but there’s the Mayor’s car,’ Mirren hissed, taking up her position by the bubbling glasses.

  Jonathan lowered Kelsey to the ground and she was struck yet again by their height difference. He reached for the roses, long-stemmed and velvety red, pushing them into her hand.

  ‘It’s you, then?’ Kelsey grinned daftly.

  ‘I hope it’s me,’ he said, before screwing up his face. ‘That didn’t make any sense.’

  They laughed and everything made sense in that moment. His eyes were wide, his cheeks glowing, and his grin just as appealing as she remembered. The reassuring press of his hand on hers felt like she’d been floating in space for months without him and now gravity was restored and her feet were back on solid ground again. She pressed her face into his chest and wrapped him in a hug.

  ‘Kelsey?’ She felt his deep voice rattle in his chest.

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was small. Was this it? Was he going to ask her right here in front of Mirren and the Mayor – who was walking down the path in her glittering gold chains and an enormous feathered tricorn hat?

  ‘I need to tell you something.’ He cleared his throat as Kelsey gulped. ‘My mom and Art are on their way here from Tulsa. When I told them about your gallery launch they were adamant they’d come see it. I hope that’s OK?’

  Kelsey adjusted her line of thinking immediately. ‘Oh! Yes, that’s lovely! I can’t wait to meet them.’

  Jonathan turned, spotting the Mayor in her regalia. ‘Woah, looks like the Queen’s arrived. Go do your thing, we’ll catch up later. Good luck.’ He grabbed her hand again before she left and kissed it. ‘I love you, Kelsey Anderson.’

  The Mayor, her lord lieutenant by her side, was smiling and gracious, shaking her hand warmly and chatting about her new venture, and Kelsey had tried to concentrate in spite of her increasing awareness that there was a very loud rabble of Scots stepping off a minibus and tramping across the marina under a cloud of champagne bottle-shaped helium balloons and curled ribbons.