As she opens her office door, she hears Charlie saying ‘standby’ on the tannoy and she sits down heavily at her desk. She takes another glass out of the desk drawer and pours out two cognacs. She downs one, pours another and turns her ergonomic chair to face the wall, squinting at it, trying to see something there. Some kind of ghostly residue, an imprint of his soul in the chilly air, any scrap of comfort that some part of him was really here. There is nothing. Only the timpani, Josh’s soft landing on the stage floor and the swishing of his cloak. She hated dancing the Crow, hates rehearsing it now. Nasty birds. Death in their beaks, their wings and their caws. Just like her.
On the tannoy, the last, hectic timpani beats of the Crow’s solo crash and Charlie’s quiet voice says ‘tabs’. She imagines the scarlet curtains falling to the stage like the blood rain of a sacrifice, all that iron tumbling into the soil, keeping all the monsters of the realm hidden from view. She closes her eyes, a little drunk now – and thank God for that, she cannot deal with the rest of the night sober – and sways a little on her ergonomic chair, waiting for AJ’s gentle knock.
***
As soon as the weighted hem of the curtain hits the stage, Mackie is out of the wings, murmuring to Kavi through the headset to guide the act three backdrop down. Against a pale blue background there is an image of a huge half-apple, cut horizontally across to show a star where the pips nestle. The fruit flesh is a pale pink, rimmed by red skin.
Lara nods appreciatively as the backdrop comes down. ‘That’s beautiful,’ she murmurs to Zach. ‘One of those things you know, isn’t it, that apples have that secret star inside them, but you still hold it the boring way and eat around the outside.’
She glances at him, suddenly unsure. ‘Is this one all right to touch?’
Zach grins. ‘This one’s just fireproof canvas with a pretty picture on it. Tonight, anyway.’
Derek wheels a black flight case markedPEARLacross the stage as the backdrop lands on the stage and Mackie starts to push a tall white podium into place, snug against the backdrop.
‘Almost there,’ Derek says as he fusses with the case so the latches are facing Mackie. ‘Almost ready for the money shot.’
Mackie ignores him as he opens the flight case and pulls aside the plastic covering. Why Derek has to make everything sound so grubby he really will never know. He flicks the brakes on the podium and reaches for the Pearl, which is always light and delicate in his arms at this point in the show. A few years ago he and Belinda got drunk on New Year’s Eve and he had said,I never set foot in a schoolroom, Belinda, so I ain’t got a clue but riddle me this. Why is the Pearl so light in the second interval but I can hardly grasp the bugger in my arms at the end of the show? What’s the physics behind the magic of that?She shook her head long and slow and gulped at her wine.Mackie, Mackenzie, she’d said.They don’t teach you that in school. You don’t want to know where I spent half my childhood, but I’ll tell you something, I didn’t learn about the Pearl there either.Mackie resists the urge to rub it a little with his sleeve. He places it on its little stand and listens for the little click and sigh. Almost there.
In the prompt corner, Charlie takes off his headphones for a moment and rubs his temples. He hates the pressure of the headset against his skull but he can’t afford to keep adjusting the gear and miss a cue while the show’s on. In the stage left wing Shirley is folding up the Crow’s cloak and Danny is re-taping the edge of the dance floor where one of the corps de ballet girls tripped and dislodged it after the Pearl waltz.
Things are subdued in the ladies’ dressing room. Everyone is recovering from Michael’s solo in the Bluepas de deux. Milly furtively swishes a gulp of water around her mouth as she gathers the sweaty Pearl waltz dresses to take them down to wardrobe for steaming. Mara is fastening the bodice of Bella’s orchard costume and wondering who she should resign to first, Belinda or Cecile. Bella in turn is fastening Jessica’s, who is wondering if she should ask Bella to stop so she can go for a wee before they head down to the stage for beginners. Stephanie is choosing which shoes will be best for the third act, staring into space as she rises onto pointe in each pair before grimacing and taking them off. Harriet is calmly pinning her headdress, giving her head a little shake to test how firmly it’s attached, listening with half her attention to the ongoing conversation about the various merits of getting online shopping delivered to Belinda’s PO box or your parents’ house. Anita would quite like to tell everyone about the time Alex bought her a birthday present from John Lewis and had it delivered to a store in time for him to collect it on a day off, but she can’t, even if the story is relevant to the current conversation. She ties her pointe shoe ribbon around her left ankle and wonders how many fairy queens Alex has had to sleep with and whether he liked it.
There is a pointed silence in the men’s dressing room. Stuart cried during Michael’s solo and everyone is pretending not to have noticed. Luke left the boots from his page costume on the floor and Benji skidded on them as he came back from the bathroom. Josh lost his temper and toldLuke that if he carried on fucking up left, right and centre he would personally see to it that the Crow hauled him out of his bed by his balls after the curfew bell and left him where no one would ever be able to rescue him. There was a sticky moment when Josh looked to Greg to back him up but Greg was staring into space and missed the cue. Romero is eating the second half of his second arancino with his feet up on the dressing table, ignoring both those sulking in humiliation and those nodding righteously to themselves.
A knock at the door and Alina comes in with an adjusted belt for Benji and helps him fasten it.What died in here?she wants to ask but she keeps her mouth shut because it’s a funny old day today, everyone’s a little on edge and besides, it’s always a bit dicey making jokes with the boys. Too many of them take themselves a bit too seriously and the rest don’t take anything seriously at all. She gives Benji’s waist a pat, wishes him good luck for his solo and shuts the door on the silence.
Downstairs, the musician’s green room by the stage is filling with a gathering relief that another show is almost done. Sandra the clarinet is telling David the new harp about her aunt’s Royal Dalton china collection. Lance is absorbed in his phone, and when Jasper calls across the room to ask which piece of skirt he’s lining up for his day off, careless of the fact that Yolanda is sitting by the window, Jean rolls her eyes, Max snorts and Ellie the viola tuts. She woke up in Lance’s cabin one frosty morning a year ago and has been noticeably less tolerant of the jokes ever since. Michael is inthe bathroom, sitting on the toilet with his head resting in his hands, listening to Wilf’s rumbling voice as he makes jokes about Lance’s harem. He has gone about everything in the worst possible way, he sees that now. If he’d made a plan with Evelyn, if he’d listened to her, if he’d gone to Belinda for advice, if he’d confided in AJ before he packed up to leave the Grub and broke his pledge, if he’d begged the Crow for mercy, he might still have something left of a life to live.
Cecile sits in her office listening to the pleasant hum of AJ’s voice talking about a performance ofAïdahe saw many years ago. She is sipping at her cognac and gliding just over drunkenness, thinking about when she will sack Greg, tomorrow before class or after rehearsals.
The dancers are beginning to trickle down to the stage now, the little patter of shoes on the concrete steps, the swish of dresses. Belinda walks past Cecile’s office door and hears AJ murmuring within. Good, she thinks. Cecile should not be alone today. She notices a puddle beneath a tannoy and, sighing, pulls a tissue out of her handbag and bends to mop it up. No matter what the Crow says, she will have to think about what can be done about Michael.
She passes the noticeboard and pulls open the door to the stage, holding it open for the boy coming up behind her, the newest of the dancers whose name escapes her just now. As she arrives in the stage right wing she sees Zach and the probation LX girl at the prompt desk, Zach spinning a roll of tape on his broad wrists and muttering intently. Looks like that’s working out. One less thing to worry about. Charlieleans forwards, presses the button on the prompt desk and murmurs, ‘Act three beginners please, act three beginners.’
***
By the stage right prompt desk, Luke hovers behind Zach’s huge bulk, holding his elbows and trying not to shiver. He sniffs, swallows a little mucus and feels a scratch in his throat. Blast. He’ll have to suffer through whatever’s making its home in him and suffer the indignities of blame for being patient zero of whatever virus is multiplying in his sinuses right now. Better pull himself together. Belinda doesn’t sign off on sick days unless she’s come to your cabin to inspect your evacuated fluids and pronounced you dying.
He wraps his arms around his torso. He could go back to the dressing room to fetch a jumper or a pair of tracksuit bottoms but he’s afraid he’ll forget he’s wearing them and wander onto the stage with them still on. No one would tell him, they’d all think it a great trick. He’d never live it down.
He can’t seem to do anything right. Any attempts to be friendly are rebuffed. Not a single word in support of him this afternoon during the rehearsal where Cecile seemed determined to reduce him to a gibbering mess. The new LX girl had seemed more comfortable here on her probation day than Luke has in six weeks.Everyone’s so friendly here, don’t you think?He looks at her now, leaning close to Zach, who’s murmuring to her intently, pointing at the downstage lighting boom. No, he doesn’t think people are friendly here. He thinks people are waiting for him to get takenby something from another world so they don’t have to vicariously squirm at his mistakes. Romero looked more interested in his snack when he tried to make conversation in the dressing room earlier in the show – but he did offer that little tip for the wedding dance, so maybe not all is lost – and Josh’s open contempt after his simple mistake with the boots made that place at the bridge of his nose ache.No, he’d pleaded with himself as the silence in the dressing room got tighter and tighter.Don’t cry. That’ll be the end.
Charlie calls beginners and Luke stretches his back a little, pads through his feet. He thinks of the guy he replaced here, someone he knows nothing about except his name – Alex, seen on a bundle of unwashed dancewear he found under the bed in his cabin – and that he had a longer torso than Luke. He’s wearing Alex’s old costume now, the top of the tunic scratching at his thighs. Alina had wrinkled her nose during his fittings.I’ll give the hem a bit of a tuck and it’ll do.That’s Luke all over. He’ll do. Barely. In a pinch.
He runs through the notes Cecile gave him – screamed at him – earlier.Arms go through first, tourlands facing front then off into thescissonne,eyes up to follow the line in thearabesque. He’s aiming to be completely ignored by her tomorrow. If she doesn’t say a word or look at him all day, he’ll know he did it all right.
In his lighter moments, on days where he has simply been ignored rather than shouted or sneered at, Luke can allow that the company’s cumulative grief might have something to do with the way he’s struggling. To lose a friend sosuddenly, so finally, without warning or goodbye and have him replaced four days later with a spotty kid on his first job out of ballet school isn’t a recipe for a warm welcome. Still, he feels a strange kinship with the disappeared Alex. A bond opposite to that of pledge-mates, perhaps: its inversion. He threw the dancewear into a bin outside Crewe train station on his first day off, but that didn’t help him fill the blank space Alex left behind. Here Luke stands in a brocade-and-sequin jacket impregnated with Alex’s sweat, he sleeps in a cabin that still now sometimes smells a little like a sandalwood aftershave he must have used, he dances all his roles in the corps de ballet. Sometimes, at night when he’s lying in his cabin waiting for the curfew bell, he asks the imagined Alex questions.Was it you who broke the hinge on the cupboard in our cabin?Did you also find that bit of the orchard dance with theentrelassélanding inarabesquedifficult?Did you leave behind a girlfriend or a boyfriend?In the moments before they took you, did you regret it, working here on this show?
He feels the heat of a gaze on him and looks around, worried Cecile’s down in the wings already, wanting to hiss one last correction he won’t be able to remember just before he goes on stage, but Cecile’s not there. Instead, he catches the eye of Derek the follow spot operator and turns away very quickly.Fuck. He knows Derek’s seen him, he always does. Having to talk to Derek would make a very shit day even worse.
Zach and the new LX girl start to climb up the ladder to the lighting box. Luke knows he has to move quickly or he’sgoing to get caught, perhaps trying to get into the other wing or just out into the corridor, but then he feels a tap on his elbow and a scream bubbles up in his throat. He’s trapped.
‘All right mate,’ Derek says, his hot breath uncomfortably close. He smells of engine oil and grease from the bottom of the pan and Luke leans away from him, trying to be as far away from him as he can without moving his feet.
‘Happy All Souls’. You got any plans?’ Derek laughs in that girlish, giggling way of his that makes Luke’s stomach curdle.
‘No, no plans.’ He smiles weakly. ‘Ha ha.’
