After Ever After (41 page)

I manage a smile and sit up.

‘I think you’re getting your fairy tales mixed up. But you’re right, and I sort of think it’s a good thing in a way.’ Fergus raises an eyebrow, clearly too tired to question me verbally. ‘Well, I mean, yes, you’re right, we all need to believe we should be a certain way – thin, successful in a career, excellent at fellatio – and we all suspect that if we are going to be happy things have to turn out a certain way. Married, house, kids, etc. Well, I know that our journey together isn’t a walk in the park, but I do still believe in our happy ending, because it’s now and tomorrow and … for ever and a day. The trick is to make sure it’s every day and not to keep waiting for it to arrive when it might never come.’

I reach over the bath and pull out the plug.

‘I want Ella to be optimistic about life – realistic, yes, but optimistic too. I’m going to read her
Cinderella
when she’s big enough, but with a short paragraph on after ever after appended.’

As the last of the cold water glugs noisily down the drain I restop the plug and turn the hot water back on again.

‘I think I will have a bath after all, if you don’t mind.’ I smile at Fergus. ‘After all, Clare’s got Ella for another hour or so, so if you like you could join me?’ I’m shaking at the thought of him touching me, but I know that I need it. I know that I need this to wipe out the memory of the morning, even if only for a short time.

Fergus’s eyes light up as steam begins to cloud the mirror and the windows, frosting them with a silver mist. Smiling and silent, we undress each other, our eyes fixed on each other until Fergus pulls me hard into the length of his body and kisses me, so sweetly that just the faintest touch of his lips washes me cleaner than an ocean full of water ever could.

The hum of the Players buzzes in the wood-panelled hallway of the town hall before I even push open the double door into what our esteemed director calls the auditorium and most of the rest of us would call a rather large hall with a makeshift stage. I scan the crowd for Mr Crawley as I enter, and then Clare, who didn’t need Fergus to baby sit after all tonight, but at first glance I can’t see either one of them. At the back of the hall, though, through the literally vibrating throng of the cast, I can see the freshly painted scenery stacked neatly against the wall. My mouth feels suddenly dry and my heart races, but I take a glass of red wine from the trestle table in the corner and take a long draught, despite the protest of my nauseous empty stomach. Before the image can materialise I pinch it forcibly out of my mind’s eye.

‘It was nothing,’ I say quietly to myself. ‘
He
is nothing. I’m just going to forget it ever happened. Nothing happened.’

I wait until my heart gradually begins to slow to a normal beat and until I breathe again. The bruises, the shock, the anger are all still there just below the surface of my skin, but I know that if I am to have any chance of escaping Gareth once and for all, no one can know what really happened to me. I have to make it go away, pretend that it never happened. At last, something that I know I’m good at.

I’ve tried, I really have tried not to come tonight, but Fergus was determined that I should.

‘You love it, why wouldn’t you go?’ he’d said as he’d dried my hair gently with a towel. ‘It’s the one thing I’ve seen you do that makes you laugh – besides Ella, that is – and what’s more it’s free! I demand you go. I’ll pick up Ella from Clare’s and tell her she can meet you there. Okay, Calamity?’

He was so sweetly pleased with himself that I could hardly refuse him, so I came. And on the short walk into town I kept repeating to myself, ‘He’s nothing. What happened was nothing. Nothing happened,’ until I was certain that my head knew the truth as well as my heart did.

Intuitively I knew that Gareth would not come here tonight. It would be too obvious, not his style at all really, but even so just the thought of him swaggering into the room to the eager ministration of a dozen or so lonely ladies with long-untended gardens makes my heart lurch and stomach contract until my mantra doesn’t work any more.

‘Are you okay?’ Mr Crawley’s hand on my shoulder seems to instantly steady me and I lean into it, just slightly.

‘Me? I’m fine, much better, I mean, after my cold.’ I remember slightly too late my drunken excuses to him on the phone. He scrutinises me closely and I resist the temptation to close my eyes against his examination.

‘Kitty,’ he begins quietly. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’

I laugh heartily. ‘You know me too well!’ I giggle stupidly. ‘A glass of wine would be lovely. Thanks ever so.’ Mr Crawley presses his lips together but seems to decide to let the moment pass and disappears instantly into the crowd.

Eager to attach myself to a group I see Barbara talking animatedly to Bill, her shiny bob jiggling with agitation as she rises repeatedly on to her toes in an excited discussion.

‘It’s true, Bill!’ she protests, stamping her heel ever so slightly as she says it. ‘I heard it on Radio Four, for goodness sakes!’

Bill snorts derisively as I approach the group.

‘What’s true?’ I ask, praying the answer won’t be that ‘Kitty Kelly shagged her gardener up on the beacon this morning’. Gratifyingly Barbara looks at me as if I’m the cavalry.

‘
Calamity Jane
has recently been discovered to be a lesbian musical,’ she tells me seriously. ‘In fact, and don’t take this the wrong way, Kitty, but actually the main role is the one I’m playing – Katie. It’s about her sexual awakening in the Wild West, which is a metaphor for vagina.’

I open and close my mouth.

‘Right,’ I say, turning to the mountainous quivering human that is Bill. ‘What do you think, Bill – Wild West as vagina?’

‘Total bollocks!’ Bill proclaims with his least conversational shout. ‘There used to be a time when lesbianism was an elegantly discreet way of fucking, and now it’s bloody everywhere. If you ask me, lesbians have prostituted themselves as a culture to men’s pathetic egocentric fantasies. I mean, you can’t turn on the TV without two women fiddling with each other’s bits these days. And now Calamity Jane was a lesbian. What next? Juliet shagging her nurse over the balcony? Jane Eyre having it away with the housekeeper? Total rubbish.’ The rest of the cast has fallen into a somewhat shocked but mostly confused silence.

‘I think it’s got more to do with a modern society that’s happy to be culturally diverse and accept its many faceted aspects, which has room for all kinds of people, even in prime-time TV slots, Bill,’ I say calmly. Bill murmurs bollocks a decibel lower than an Oasis gig.

‘I must say, Barbara,’ I say, ‘I can’t really see it with Calamity Jane. I mean, she’s madly in love with Wild Bill?’ It seems faintly ridiculous for me to be discussing the motivation of my version of Calamity, but I’m intrigued and relieved to have something else to think about for a moment.

Barbara tips her head to one side, giving me a curiously birdlike look.

‘Well it’s obvious when you start to think about it. Calamity loves to dress as a man; lesbians dress like men, although I’ve never understood why, really, but anyway – she hates all things girlish and despises Wild Bill …’

‘Have you never heard of sexual tension!’ Bill bellows, causing another momentary hush in the chatter. ‘It’s what we had last Christmas just before the panto and what dissipated rapidly half an hour later in the props cupboard!’

I give up, looking aghast, and instead marvel at Barbara’s determination to ignore her tormentor.

‘
And
,’ Barbara continues as if he wasn’t there, ‘and when she goes to Chicago to find Adelaide Adams it’s plain she finds her sexually attractive, it’s in the script.’ Sensing Bill’s next interruption Barbara rushes on, ‘When her and Katie are in the cabin they sing “A Woman’s Touch” – it’s clearly about lesbian masturbation …’

‘I thought all female masturbation was lesbian,’ Bill says, pushing Barbara over the limit at last.

‘Bill, I slept with you two days after my husband walked out on me for a teenager. There was no sexual tension. I was a pitiful confused woman on the rebound, not to mention diazepam, and I needed some comfort. All I can say is, thank God we did it standing up as at least I made it out of that cupboard with my life if not my dignity intact, and it is you that insists upon attaching more significance to what happened than I. It was a sordid pointless encounter that I didn’t want to engage in and which I used to regret. Now I can’t even be bothered to regret it any more.’ Barbara spits at him like a small sleek harrier in full attack.

‘Exactly!’ I shout, knocking her sideways out of the air.

She blinks at me and smiles. ‘Thank you for understanding, Kitty.’

I smile back at her. ‘No, Barbara – thank you.’

Barbara gives Bill one last long scathing look. ‘Secret love,’ she says coldly. ‘A love so secret she can’t speak its name. Lesbians.’ She crosses her arms under her small bust, pivots on her heels and marches backstage.

‘Well, Bill,’ I say with a wry smile, ‘there’s one woman you haven’t quite managed to work your charm on.’

‘Majestic,’ Bill sighs. ‘Like Diana the huntress. Ah, Kitty, unrequited love, it’s a terrible thing.’

The house lights dim before I can respond, and a spot illuminates Caroline on stage.

‘Right, let’s get a move on, shall we!’ Caroline’s dulcet tones instantly hush the chatter and gossip.

‘As you know, tonight was to be our penultimate rehearsal, Friday the dress rehearsal and our first performance next Wednesday. However, there’s been a change of plan. Today is the dress rehearsal, Friday’s slot has been cancelled due to double-booking with the sixth form summer ball, and our first performance is on Monday, now running for
five
shows, okay?’ A stunned silence flattens the atmosphere.

‘Um, but,’ I hear Clare’s voice pipe up. She must have arrived late. ‘Some of the costumes aren’t quite finished yet, Caroline. I’ve arranged to fit Calamity’s ballgown tomorrow so it’d be ready for Friday’s rehearsal and …’

Caroline taps her heel vigorously.

‘Yes, yes, I’m perfectly aware of the constraints, but I had hoped that I was working with a team of professionals here, a group of people who when asked to can rise to a challenge and above it!’ She flings her unseasonable red velvet scarf over her tightly veined neck. ‘Now, as you well know, the Tiny Tot Tap and Tango Troupe were supposed to be performing for the festival here on Monday and Tuesday evening, but there’s been an outbreak of chickenpox that’s sweeping through the primary schools of Berkhamsted and the troupe’s dwindled from forty-seven to six, a huge disappointment for the camcorder-bearing parents of our community. Our mayor called upon me to save the day. “Caroline,” he asked of me, “are you the one to save us from looking bad in the
Gazette
when they compare the Berkhamsted Festival to the Tring one?” And I said unto him, “Yes, I am the one, Kenneth.”’ She fixes us with a steely eye. ‘Are you going to make me a liar or are you going to prove that we
can
do it and, what’s more, increase the door takings by as much as seventy pounds!’ Caroline raises her fist and rattles her bracelets fiercely like an am dram Amazonian queen, and a strangely bloodthirsty cheer rumbles through the crowd.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bill mumbles miserably in my ear. ‘Did someone just say we declared war on the French?’

I smile to myself. ‘More like the Tring Victorian Street Festival,’ I reply, wondering not for the first time what ancient grudge means that the two towns, barely five miles apart, couldn’t schedule their respective festivals on different weeks.

‘Same thing,’ Bill sniffs, before edging through the crowd towards the piano.

Wild Bill snogs me with stoic diligence as the final curtain falls, and I bear it stiffly, counting the seconds until it is over. I thought the dress rehearsal went pretty well, all things considered – things like Barbara’s state of high-coloured coquettishness ever since her encounter with Bill, which makes me wonder if she’s been wonderfully Shakespearian about pretending not to like him. And the fact that Wild Bill, bless him, can’t seem to get much wilder than a mildly agitated elderly house dog, and that the only person in the whole ensemble who’s got a voice worth listening to has been sitting in the wings fringing a fake suede jacket from Mark One with curtain trimmings. But at least for an hour or so I haven’t thought about anything else. I haven’t thought about where Fergus and I go from here and I haven’t thought about … anything else.

‘Do you fancy a quick drink before we go?’ Clare asks me as she packs away her handiwork. ‘I don’t feel much like going home right now, I’m all overexcited.’ She tries to bite her smile back but it seems irrepressible.

I look at her sideways, noticing the flush in her cheeks, and remember that she had a man round at her flat when I spoke to her this morning, a morning which seems light years away.

‘I wish that an afternoon with two babies would give me that kind of glow,’ I tell her, raising an eyebrow. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’ve been dying to tell you.’ Clare laughs, her eyes dancing and her resolve to keep a secret crumbling instantly. ‘Oh, I’m not supposed to tell, but …’

Just as she opens her mouth Dora appears over her shoulder. I shake my head and pinch myself that it really is Dora, and for some reason my first thought is that she’s come to tell me she’s dead, and my second thought is that she knows about Gareth and she’s come to help me.

‘Dora! Oh, thank God!’ I exclaim, holding my arms out to her. Dora smiles, looking vaguely surprised at my reaction, and hugs me, confirming that she is real, and at least currently alive. She’s really here with a real overnight bag. And a very real suitcase.

‘Oh hiya.’ Clare deflates, seeing her opportunity for indiscretion fade away.

‘All right, mate, all right, Kits.’ Dora’s arm clings around my neck. She’s not drunk, at least not with any substance I can smell; instead she seems to be holding on to me almost for protection.

‘How did you know?’ I ask her. ‘Oh God, I’m so glad to see you.’ I glance over her shoulder fully expecting to see an ex in full sail heading towards us after her blood, usually because Dora’s moved into their flat, turned their lives upside down and left with their favourite CD. Has she chucked Bruce or Wayne or whoever it was who sounded like a hero in a western?