Every Vow You Break (11 page)

‘Someone’s put a lot of work into them,’ Marcus said, trying to sound positive.

‘And the repertoire’s very ambitious. Do you think I should offer to help out with the graphic design?’ Lara said.

‘Do you think you ought, though?’ Marcus asked, wincing.

She looked at him and willed him not to get downhearted. ‘
Macbeth
’s going to be great,’ she said.

‘Oh yes. Undoubtedly.’

‘Can I help you?’ A voice in the foyer beneath them made them both jump. They turned to see a rotund young woman standing behind the foyer desk. She had long, straw-blond hair that reached down to her not inconsiderable buttocks. ‘It’s just,’ she said, a stiff little smile stuck in the mass of her face, ‘you’re not supposed to be in here yet.’

‘Oh, James let us in,’ Marcus said, going back down the stairs.

‘Oh! You must be Marcus Wayland,’ the young woman said. ‘I can tell by your accent. Welcome to Trout Island.’ Wiping her own hand on her straining jeans, she reached out and shook Marcus’s. It looked to Lara as if she was trying to stop herself from curtsying. ‘I’m Alyssa Smith. Front of house manager.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Marcus beamed. ‘And this is my wife, Lara.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Alyssa nodded in Lara’s direction. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m opening up in five minutes and I have to get my ticketing system set up.’ She gestured to their glasses. ‘You can stay here until you finish your wine. We need to be a little discreet about that … I know James thinks it’s completely lame,’ she rolled her eyes. ‘But there are a few ladies here tonight who feel rather strongly about the booze issue.’

‘We’ve met them,’ Marcus said.

‘I just love your accent. I’m gonna bug you till I learn it!’ Alyssa said.

Lara and Marcus stood to one side, sipping their drinks, while Alyssa took two long, convoluted answerphone messages concerning ticket reservations. No one left their surnames. The assumption seemed to be that Alyssa would know who Kenny and Laura and Marsha and Hank were, and in fact she did. She dutifully wrote down the contents of the messages with a purple Sharpie pen, sticking the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she worked. Then she opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a metal cash tin, which she opened with a key from large bunch on a curled wire attached to her otherwise redundant belt. Inside was a pile of green cardboard tickets.

‘What happens if you get more bookings than you have tickets?’ Lara asked.

‘We just tell ’em to come on back the following night. Except for some of the weekend people, they don’t usually mind. They don’t have much else to do round here. Excuse me and glasses away now.’ Alyssa bustled round the desk and opened the front door, revealing a smiling, expectant queue of the largely white-haired audience.

Olly was near the head of the line, towering over the ladies in front of him. He looked exasperated.

‘Mum,’ he said loudly, as he came through the door. ‘Where the hell did you get to?’

One of the ladies turned and tutted at his choice of language and attitude.

If only she knew the half of it, Lara thought.

‘We’ve been stuck out here with Jack and he’s had an accident,’ Bella said, manoeuvring herself and her little brother out from behind an elderly man in a cowboy hat.

‘Oh, poor mite,’ a woman with jelly arms said as Bella handed him through the crowd.

‘It’s runny, Mum,’ Jack said, holding on to his bottom.

‘Poor you.’ Lara took him by the hand and led him through into the toilet with the changing mat. Jack had a delicate stomach, and any variation in diet, or even water, could lead to upsets. Luckily his underpants had caught the worst of it, so she took them off and cleaned him up the best she could.

‘I’ll get rid of these,’ she said, balling up his pants, ‘and you can just wear your trousers and go commando.’

‘Cool,’ Jack said.

She wrapped the offending item in paper towels and went back out into the foyer.

‘Excuse me Alyssa,’ she said, motioning to the stinking bundle she held down at her side. ‘Is there anywhere I can leave this?’

Alyssa wrinkled her nose. ‘There’s a dumpster round back,’ she said, pointing. ‘Just be sure and close it up after or the racoons’ll get in.’

Leaving Jack with Olly and Bella, Lara went outside and round the building. On the other side of the large dustbin she could see two actors, a man and a woman, sitting on an old sofa by what must be the stage door. They were leaning against one another, smoking. Lara crouched down slightly, so she couldn’t be seen.

‘Well I don’t give one shit,’ the woman was saying. ‘I’ve told my agent I’m never going to come up here again, even if they did manage to pay me properly.’

‘I know, honey, I know. But we’ve got to give it our best now we’re here. It wouldn’t be professional otherwise.’

‘How dare she tell me I got fat. Did I get fat, Brian?’

‘June. You know you aren’t fat. You have a beautiful body. You know I love your beautiful body.’

‘Oh Brian.’ June blew away her smoke and leaned in towards him, cupping his head in her hand and pulling his face towards hers. They locked mouths and Brian’s hand worked its way into June’s dressing gown, exposing the most enormous, round and rigid breast Lara had ever seen. He twirled the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, as if he were one-handedly rolling a short cigar.

A tall good-looking boy appeared in the stage doorway and coughed into his fist to alert them to his presence. They unglued their faces to look up at him, but Brian’s hand remained firmly on June’s exposed breast.

‘Yes Sean?’ June asked, drawing on her cigarette and looking up at him.

‘Just to let you know, June and Brian, that the house is now open and this is your fifteen-minute call. I guess you didn’t hear it over the tannoy.’

‘I believe it’s customary for stage management to address us as Miss Tarpin and Mr Weinberg,’ June said, flaring her nostrils. ‘For our calls.’

‘Now you two get your asses inside and into costume.’ Betty appeared behind Sean, moving him aside. ‘I have loosened the dress for you tonight,
Miss
Tarpin, so you have absolutely no excuse for bum notes. And
Mr
Weinberg, I would thank you mightily if you removed your hand from Miss Tarpin’s appendage and – uh – ceased from corrupting my sweet innocent assistant here.’

‘Ain’t nothing he ain’t seen before.’ Another actor – thirty-something and all Italian handsomeness – sauntered past Sean and ruffled his hair. He threw himself on the sofa, nearly on top of June, and lit a cigarette.

‘Please, ladies,’ Betty cried. ‘Are we going to do any acting tonight, or are we simply going to smoke?’

‘This is a genuine choice you’re offering?’ The Italian leaned back and exhaled, squinting his eyes up against the smoke.

Betty sighed deeply and shook her head. ‘I expect you to be standing by, with your costumes on, at the five.’

She turned and went back into the theatre.

‘You told him, Tony,’ Brian said, finally taking his hand away from June’s breast.

‘Asshole,’ Tony said to Brian. Then he took one last drag on his cigarette, stamped it out on the bare earth and disappeared inside the building.

‘Come on, honey,’ June said, getting up and adjusting her dressing gown. In doing so, she managed to flash everything she had at the stage manager. It looked to Lara like a deliberate move, but the young man remained remarkably composed.

He watched the pair go inside, then he moved smartly around the sofa, picking up the empty drinks cans, cigarette butts and plastic cups that the actors had just left there. Lara felt like she had stooped behind the dumpster for too long, so she lifted the lid and threw her bundle in, where it landed with a clatter.

‘Oh, hi,’ Sean said, looking over at her.

‘Hello,’ Lara said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

‘No, that’s fine. You have to be Bella’s mom.’

‘I am. How did you—?’

‘I met her in the shop earlier on. You’re very like her.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Lara said, smoothing her hair. So, then. This was the ‘big boy’. He had the bluest eyes she had ever seen, and a smile to melt a young girl’s heart. She hoped Bella wouldn’t lose her head, though. ‘Quite a handful you’ve got there,’ she said, motioning to the stage door.

‘You’re not kidding. June and Brian are a total nightmare. I’ll be glad to start working with a saner cast.’

‘They’re not in the Shakespeare?’

‘No, thank God. They’re strictly musical theatre.’

Lara was silently relieved on Marcus’s behalf. ‘Are you stage-managing
Macbeth
too?’

‘A bit, but I’m also on stage,’ he said. ‘Just Ross and the Doctor. Nothing great, but it’s all experience.’

‘So you want to act?’ Lara felt like she was interviewing a prospective son-in-law. An actor was not what she hoped for her daughter.

‘Of course. I’m off to Juilliard in the fall. I’ll be leaving Trout Island at last.’ He leaned past Lara and put the rubbish he had collected into the dumpster, on top of Jack’s underwear.

He really was very handsome indeed, Lara thought.

‘Sean? Where’s my Sean?’ Betty bustled out of the stage door. ‘Oh, you’re with little
Mamacita
. Hi honey.’ She went to Lara and kissed her on the cheek, as if they were the best of friends. ‘Have we got a surprise for
you
later on.’

‘So I heard,’ Lara said.

‘Have you got any idea what it might be?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘My lips are sealed, honey.’ Betty put a manicured finger to her lips. ‘Now come along Sean, my darling, this show won’t run itself, you know. We
need
you.’ She put a hand round his shoulder and guided him in.

On her way back to the foyer, Lara decided not to tell Marcus about what she had just witnessed. But it had shown that Betty had style and wit, so perhaps she and James had managed to craft a work of substance.

As it turned out, they hadn’t.

Set Me On Fire
! held few pleasant surprises. It was a predictable rags-to-riches tale of a Southern girl who – through a mixture of sheer determination and an encounter with an angel who assured her she would become famous – fought her way up past brutal boyfriends, unscrupulous managers and downright rude hick-bar audiences to Stardom. Lara was certain Betty’s real story was far more interesting than this anodyne song-and-dance fest suggested, not least because, unlike the character in the play, she wasn’t actually a girl.

As Pearl, the lead character baggily based on Betty, June Turpin was at least thirty years too old at the beginning, when she should have been sixteen. Her costume, a loose, raggedy dress and plaits, drew a guffaw from Olly that June, from the fleeting dagger stare she shot his way, clearly heard.

The rest of the audience, however, loved
Set Me On Fire!
The dances weren’t the worst of it, Lara had to admit, and each piece was met with a near standing ovation.

The clapping was the only part Jack enjoyed, so Lara had her work cut out keeping him quiet and still during the other bits. A veteran of taking small children to theatres, she had packed three small toffee lollies, which went some way to keeping him busy, or at least quiet, unlike his big brother who seemed unable to sit still.

‘Could you please stop fidgeting around?’ Marcus whispered, leaning across Lara and tapping Olly on the knee.

As the house lights came up for a well-earned interval, Lara looked sideways at Marcus. He was visibly fighting hard to maintain the illusion that this place was going to be the making of him.

‘Oh my,’ a woman with an immaculate shiny white bob said to her companion as she squeezed out of her row of seats fanning herself with her programme. ‘Wasn’t that just
something
?’

From the Wayland family seats near the front of the auditorium, Lara looked around at the audience as they moved out of the theatre. There were no New York agent types to be seen. Apart from a couple of dragged-along teenagers emitting a truculence even more finely honed than Olly’s, there was hardly anyone in the room under the age of sixty.

The Wayland family were the last to remain seated, a little out of place in their youth, Englishness and suitcase-crumpled clothes. As the last old lady waddled out of the exit – bound, no doubt, for the cake stand – Lara felt the back of her neck prickle, as if someone were standing right behind her.

She turned in her seat and looked at the empty auditorium. The banks of brand-new red velvet seats stood blank-faced and tipped up. Then a slight movement drew her eye to the shallow balcony at the very back of the room. Supported by ornate metal pillars, it spanned the width of the room. The angle from her seat to the platform was such that she couldn’t pick out much, but as she looked up Lara saw the tall outline of a man silhouetted and haloed from a house light directly behind him. She couldn’t be certain, but she had the feeling his eyes were right upon her. As soon as she saw him though, he stepped back into the shadows and out of her sightline.

‘Did you see that?’ she said to Marcus, who had finally stood up.

‘What?’

‘There was a man …’ She pointed to the balcony.

Marcus looked. ‘Probably the lighting operator.’

‘Probably,’ she said.

‘Or you’re seeing things. Wouldn’t be the first time. Now then, who wants a slice of pie?’ Marcus said.

On their way out to the cake stand Lara looked up at the balcony again, but there was no one there. Perhaps Marcus was right. Even with her contact lenses in, her Mac-strained eyesight didn’t do too well in dim light; more than once she had found herself greeting complete strangers in theatre bars.

Out on the lawn, the first act of a glorious, golden sunset was kicking off, and the still air was full of bugs cruising the audience for bloody snacks.

‘Look how black the trees are,’ Bella said to Lara, pointing at the ridge of outlined maples on top of the hill behind the village. ‘I wouldn’t want to be up there now.’

‘Bllllairrrr Witch.’ Olly loomed over her.

‘Piss off.’ Bella pushed him away from her.

‘It’s a different world indeed,’ Lara said, feeding a slice of pie to Jack and trying to stop it spilling down the front of his Chinese jacket. The ‘cherry’ filling was too impossibly red to be anything other than permanently staining.