Rebecca's Rules (10 page)

Anyway, strangely enough, it turns out Jane’s school did
Mary Poppins
last year and she played Mr Banks, the children’s father.

‘I’m actually about six inches shorter than the girl who played Michael,’ she said. ‘So it looked a bit weird. But I think it worked.’

She said that she had a lot of fun in the musical and her friends were in the chorus and had a great time, so what with this and my parents’ words of wisdom I feel a bit better now about being stuck in the boring old chorus while Vanessa and Karen Rodgers are the stars of the show.

Right, I’m going to go back to Gerald Durrell and
Mary Poppins.
It is quite a soothing combination. Which I need because there’s still nothing from Paperboy. I’m not going to check my mail or Facebook until tomorrow, it’s all stressing me out too much.

MONDAY

So, it turns out being in a musical is not what I expected. I
thought it would be all just, you know, singing and dancing and improvising (my natural skill). But for now it seems to be all about something called ‘stagecraft’ (which as far as I can tell seems to mean ‘walking across a stage without falling over’) and being in what is essentially a choir! It is not very dramatic, at least if you’re in the boring old chorus. But it was still quite fun, at least some of the time. Especially for Alice.

This is what happened. All us exciting glamorous musical people had to gather in the hall after last class.

‘At last,’ said Cass, as we walked down the corridor. ‘My career as a set designer begins.’

‘Are you actually going to be designing the sets?’ said Alice. ‘I mean, I think Ms Dowling might be doing the design part and you’ll be doing the, I dunno, painting-bits-of-cardboard part. I don’t know if you should get your hopes up …’

But Cass said that she knew she was learning her new trade from the ground up.

‘I have to start somewhere,’ she said, which was worryingly sensible of her.

Ellie will be learning new skills too, from the mysterious Mrs Limond.

And I will be learning new skills as well, such as trying not
to kill Karen Rodgers (this is going to be very difficult, as you will see).

When we got to the hall, the boys from St Anthony’s were there already. To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten they were going to be doing the musical with us. But we saw them as soon as we walked into the hall, and I froze. So did Cass and Alice. Because there, sitting on a plastic chair in the St Dominic’s school hall, all ready to play Bert the chimney sweep himself, was Bike Boy! Or Richard Murray, as he is really called.

‘Oh my God,’ said Cass. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

‘Bike Boy!’ I said.

We both looked at Alice. She was just staring at Bike Boy and her cheeks had gone very pink. Then Bike Boy glanced over and saw us. He looked quite surprised too, but in a good way, I think. He smiled and raised his hand in greeting, so we sort of waved back.

‘Where will we go? What will we do?’ said Alice in a flustered way.

‘Everyone’s just sitting down,’ said Cass. ‘I don’t think it matters where. Come on.’

Ellie had got there before us so we sat down next to her just as Ms Dowling (the art teacher) and Ms Byrne came in with
a strange woman whom we’d never seen before. She was quite young and quite pretty in a dramatic sort of way. She had very dark shoulder-length hair with a very nice glossy fringe (I know it seems like I’m obsessed with other people’s fringes, but it’s because I can’t have a decent fringe myself. I got one last year and it just grew straight out from my head in a mad way rather than falling down all shiny. Luckily, it grew out fairly quickly and even my hairdresser agreed it was a bad idea so as soon as it was long enough she just trimmed the edges so it went back into the rest of my hair. This was unlike poor old Cass, who’s been trying to grow hers out for ages. Her hairdresser keeps cutting it back in).

Anyway, as well as her fringe, the mysterious woman was wearing a black and white stripy top, a black cardigan, black skinny jeans and black converse. She had lovely glowing skin and her lipstick was bright red. It looked like she wasn’t wearing any other make-up but I had a feeling she was like my mum’s friends who wear loads of really expensive make-up in order to look like they’re not wearing any.

‘Who’s she?’ said Ellie, who didn’t recognise Bike Boy so wasn’t as stunned as me, Cass and Alice. ‘She looks kind of French.’

But she wasn’t French. She and Ms Byrne and Ms Dowling, who is looking after the backstage stuff, went up on the stage.

‘Hi everyone,’ said Ms Byrne. ‘Welcome to the first rehearsal of the second-year musical! Now, I’d like to introduce you to the director of this year’s show. She’s an up-and-coming director and a graduate of the Trinity College Drama department who happens to be a former St Dominic’s girl. So please welcome Cathy Laverty.’

We all applauded politely and Ms Byrne passed the microphone to Cathy Laverty, who clearly wasn’t French after all.

‘Hi,’ she said and looked out at us in an intense way. She has very big eyes. ‘I’m Cathy Laverty, but you can all call me Cathy. And I’d like to welcome you all to a journey to the heart of
Mary Poppins.
You might think we’re about to put on just another school musical …’ We all looked nervously at each other because to be honest, that is exactly what we thought. ‘But,’ Cathy (as we were told to call her) went on, ‘we’re embarking on an adventure in theatre.’

Heavens.

Cathy started talking about how we were setting off on a journey to the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious heart of
Mary Poppins
, and while this was going on I sneaked a glance at
Bike Boy (I should really start calling him Richard) and his cohorts. There were only a few of them and they all looked quite ordinary, apart from one tall, thin boy who was sitting next to Richard.

He had dark hair cut short at the back and sides but sort of floppy on top, like the First World War soldiers in Rachel’s history book (the other week I was so bored by my own homework I wandered into Rachel’s room and started flicking through her books to see if anything more exciting is awaiting me in a few years. It isn’t). He wasn’t exactly incredibly good-looking but he had an interesting face. And he wasn’t listening to the speech either. In fact, he was reading a book. I couldn’t see what it was at first, but it was a very battered-looking paperback that looked as if it had been published long before we were born.

I was still looking at him (while trying not to make it obvious that was I was looking at him) when Cathy finished her impassioned speech and gave the mike back to Ms Byrne, who thanked her and urged us to give her a welcoming round of applause. Which we did.

‘And of course,’ she said, when the clapping had stopped, ‘we want to give a special St Dominic’s welcome to our visitors
from St Anthony’s. Can we all welcome them with another big round of applause!’

We all clapped. Most of the boys looked slightly terrified for some reason, apart from Bike Boy, who looked like he was going to start laughing, and the tall, thin boy, who just kept reading his book, with an amused sort of expression on his face, as if a whole room full of girls weren’t staring at him and clapping.

‘Now,’ Ms Byrne went on. ‘Can I get the chorus over here, please? Principals, I want you over there with Cathy. Backstage crew, Ms Dowling will see you all up on the stage. Thanks, girls. And boys, of course.’

We all got up and shuffled over to our different groups. Cass kept looking significantly over to Bike Boy as she went up to the stage. Luckily, he didn’t notice because he was coming our way.

‘Hey,’ he said, smiling at us as if were really pleased to see us (or at least Alice). ‘Long time no see!’

‘Hi,’ said Alice. ‘Um, how’s your band?’

‘Oh, fine,’ said Bike Boy. ‘Y’know. We’re playing a gig soon. How’s yours?’

‘Sort of on hiatus at the moment,’ said Alice, and lifted up
her hand so he could see the plaster. Bike Boy whistled in a sympathetic way. But before he could say anything Ms Byrne called, ‘I need all the chorus over here right now!’ So we had to run over to her. But before we did, Bike Boy said, ‘See you later!’ And Alice went pinker than ever.

That’s when I thought we’d get started on all the singing and dancing, but no! It was all about this stagecraft business, so us chorus people all had to gather at the back of a pretend stage (a corner of the hall) while Cathy Laverty showed the main actors where to stand and how to move about the stage while reading lines. Basically, it seemed to be about making sure they didn’t have their backs turned to the audience half the time.

Vanessa was tossing her hair about (she must have learned some new tricks from her orange party pals) and looking disgustingly smug. And Karen wasn’t much better. In fact, she was almost worse because she kept sucking up to Cathy.

‘Oooh, Cathy, is this right?’ she said in a simpering voice and I actually thought I was going to be sick. But that probably wouldn’t have gone down very well with Cathy so I just made a sick face at Alice instead.

Anyway, even thought it was a bit boring standing there
in the background watching the stars of the show, it was also interesting at times because Bike Boy and the mysterious First World War boy, who turned out to be playing Mr Banks, were really good. I knew when we saw old Bike Boy at the Battle of the Bands that he had star quality. It’s funny, he was so serious and melodramatic when he was performing on stage that time, but he’s very cheerful and friendly in real life. Some of the other cast members looked a bit awkward sometimes when they were walking around the stage, but he and John Kowalski (for that is the name of the mysterious boy) looked totally comfortable, like there was nothing weird about standing up in front of a bunch of girls they didn’t know and walking about reading lines. Susie Murray was very good too. You’d never know from just talking to her about made-up youth hostels and train directions in German that she was such a good actress. I suppose those conversations didn’t really show her acting range.

Of course, I did not join the musical to just stand there while Vanessa strutted about the stage like she was at her stupid birthday party, so after a while I did start to feel a bit annoyed. But then Cathy reminded us chorus people that we weren’t just a little choir, we were actors too, so we had to remember this when we were on stage. In some scenes we had
to be other nannies; in others we’d be at the races and in others we’d be dressed as servants. Then she took the lead actors aside and us lowly chorus folk started to run through some songs with Ms Byrne.

Ms Byrne said she hoped we’d been listening to our soundtrack CDs over the weekend (I had, as you know). Then she told us she was going to change some of the songs that are just sung by one or two characters in the film.
Mary Poppins
is not a musical with big chorus numbers − most of the songs are just sung by one character. But now the chorus are going to join in for parts of those songs (I tried not to think that this means that basically we will be Vanessa’s backing singers).

We started going through the chorus of ‘Feed the Birds’ and after a while it actually sounded quite good. And to make it even better, Alice and I started acting out the words to each other very enthusiastically. Ms Byrne noticed and told us to ‘stop messing’, which is very unfair because Cathy had just told us we were meant to acting when we were singing. How can you get into trouble for doing what you’re told? Truly this world is very unfair. Alice said this very politely and Ms Byrne said that for the moment she just wanted us to learn the songs and ‘not think about acting until you can actually sing’
which wasn’t very nice. I think she should be trying harder to encourage our creativity.

But still, it was all much more fun than what I’d normally have been doing on a Monday afternoon, ie trying to avoid my mother giving me some sort of lecture, which is basically how I spend my time at home. It all went on longer than we expected, so when it was over Alice had to rush off to get her lift and she didn’t get to say anything to Bike Boy. He did give her a cheerful wave when she was leaving, though, which was good, I think. I was looking for Cass when Karen smirked at me.

‘I hope you’re ready to watch everything I do,’ she said. ‘Seeing as you’re my understudy. If anything happens to me, you’re going to have to be able to recreate my performance. Perfectly.’

I tried to think of something clever to say to that but I couldn’t. So I just said, ‘Well, I bet that won’t be hard.’

Karen gave this ridiculous affected laugh. So much for her getting a bit better since the Battle of the Bands. It looks like this musical, combined with her fairytale prince Bernard, has gone to her head. Which is all I need.

‘It’s okay if you’re jealous,’ she said. ‘I know it’s hard for you
to be out of the spotlight, after your wonderful show at the Battle of the Bands.’

‘It’s fine, actually,’ I said.

Karen ignored me. ‘If you need any advice on acting or singing, I’d be glad to help,’ she said. ‘Bernard – that’s my boyfriend, by the way, he goes to the Mary Ann Norland Drama School – says he thinks I’m a natural actress.’