Theatrical Page 2

  I want to do this on my own, not to follow someone else. To know I got it because I worked for it, and because I earned it.

  Amy looks at me for a long, long time and jots something down on my form, and Rick folds his arms across his chest, stretching his feet out underneath the table. “So you’ve done two years at the Square Globe. What does that mean – weekends?” He fixes me with a look that makes me feel like a bug pinned to a board in a museum.

  “Whenever I could get over there. Weekends, holidays, evenings after school…”

  “And they won’t miss you?”

  “Umm…” I fidget with the edge of my damp sleeve, squeezing out a drop of water. “I’ve…” What is it people say? “I’ve stepped back from the Square Globe a bit.”

  Something that looks almost like a smirk flits across his face. “Stepped back?” He studies me carefully, searching for more. Well, he’s not going to find it – not here, not now. Not Rick Hillier.

  After a silence long enough to stage an opera, he nods and moves on. “What about theatre you’ve seen? Can you tell us about something you watched recently?”

  “Oh…I went to the Royal Court. The Almeida, and the Old Vic.”

  “London or Bristol?”

  “Both.”

  “Did you indeed?”

  “I saw you. You were really good. Really good.” I hear it from somewhere outside my body. I can’t stop it – it just comes out of me – and now I definitely, definitely want to curl up in a ball and die. Or possibly have the ground open up and swallow me and then this will be over.

  “Well, thank you. That’s very kind.”

  The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle slightly, and…he’s almost smiling. Rick Hillier. Actual actor/director/general-all-round-theatre-rock-star Rick Hillier, sitting in front of me and smiling. At me. Or at least smiling near me.

  When I saw him onstage at the London Old Vic six months ago, he’d shaved off all his hair for the role and – from where I was sitting, at least – he looked like he was three metres tall and made of nothing but solid muscle. Now he’s just a guy who’s…what, almost forty…with a grey-speckled, trimmed beard, close-cropped dark hair and a slightly tatty jumper with holes near the ends of the sleeves. Holes which he’s hooked his thumbs through.

  And despite that and the (almost) smile, he’s still terrifying.

  “I, umm…I don’t get to see that much live theatre. School. Trains. The show times and the cost, you know? But sometimes I get cheap tickets…” (By which I mean I haul myself on an early train on a Saturday and schlep to the West End and queue for day seats and returns and those weird sort-of-standing tickets right at the back…) “And I go to loads of the cinema theatre screenings.” (Like I could forget the time I was going into the screen showing Richard III live from the Barbican with all the little old ladies on their social outing, while everyone from my year in school was going into the next screen to see…I don’t know, Exploding Monkeys With Shotguns IV or something. It was weird. Maybe I’m just weird.)

  A thick, heavy silence has fallen around me.

  Did I say all of that out loud?

  Amy is nodding and Rick is still half-smiling and sort of narrowing his eyes, and Folder Man – Charlie? – is looking at me thoughtfully, and I wish I knew how to make myself sound calm, collected and competent; maybe sound a bit like a seventeen-year-old interviewing for an internship at a real theatre and less like…well, me?

  “Do you have any particular deputy stage managers whose style you would hope to emulate?” Charlie Folder Man comes back with a low blow, and honestly, I preferred his first question. Particularly seeing as this one’s a trick. I shuffle in my seat. My jeans squelch.

  Is it a trick?

  The seconds crawl by like weeks.

  No, it’s a trick. It’s definitely a trick.

  I think.

  “I read something – ages ago – that said the best DSMs are like ninjas. Kind of invisible. They hold everything together – but unless you actually know what they do, you never see them. You wouldn’t even know they exist, never mind realizing they were running around behind the stage and the set the entire time you were watching a show. They’re like…” Another drip runs down between my shoulder blades, making me completely lose the thread of my thought.

  “I…the, um…sorry – what was I saying?”

  “Stage managers are ninjas, I think it was?”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, kind of. Maybe they’re more like wizards? Either way, that’s the kind of DSM I’d like to be. A wizard ninja. Wizinja. Winja. Yes.”

  I make myself stop.

  It was better when I couldn’t actually talk. Anything would be better than this. I just compared the deputy stage manager of an actual theatre to a wizard ninja.

  I did that.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Amy smile – a real smile – although at a stern look from Charlie, her face almost immediately blanks and she shuffles the papers in front of her.

  “Okay, let’s go back to the original question,” she says, looking right at me. “Why stage management, specifically? It’s not the easiest job in the theatre. You’re involved in every aspect of a production, right from pre-production and rehearsals all the way to get-out when the show closes. The hours are long and they’re unsociable. It’s not the most straightforward career to balance a life with.”

  And this time I don’t need cue cards.

  “When I was little, my mum…” I stop myself. I start again. “I got to go backstage at the Earl’s when I was a kid. There was an opera company in.” I remember it so clearly. Back then, Mum was working in theatre full-time – it was right before she started doing freelance TV and the odd wedding, before she properly started her own business.

  The last interviewer – the third man, who’s been fiddling with his phone since I walked in and hasn’t said a word – suddenly sits straight up and looks at me. His eyes are very small and a very bright shade of green. It’s a little like being watched by a cat. “At the Earl’s, you say? You must have been quite young – there hasn’t been an opera company through the theatre in ten years.”

  “Nine.” I probably shouldn’t have corrected him – especially seeing as I’m not entirely sure who he is. “It was nine years ago. It was my eighth birthday – that’s why I remember it, I guess. The chorus sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.”

  Like anyone could forget that. Ever.

  “And that was what made you want to work in theatre? Why?” Amy asks.

  “I was waiting in the corner of the production office. I think the stage team were having a meeting, and it was just…the way they talked. How they knew everything about what was going on in the theatre and everyone in it…like it was part of them and they were part of it and you couldn’t separate them. Like they belonged there. And listening to them, I suddenly couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else or be anywhere else, and I haven’t, ever since. Walking around all the little corridors backstage, the corners the audience can’t see – even at the Square Globe – it’s like you’re being let into a secret. Like everything that happens on the stage is just a reflection – or the tip of an iceberg, the tiny bit that most people see. The only bit most people ever see. Backstage – that’s the rest of it.”

  I can’t stop it. The words, the ideas, come fizzing out of me like fireworks.

  “People come to the theatre to be shown things. To experience things. They want to be taken somewhere else, somewhere they can never really go. They want a journey – and you, everybody backstage…you’re their passport.”

  Charlie scribbles something on the page in front of him – probably a huge NO across my name, if the expression on his face is anything to go by – and closes the file.

  At least I tried.

  I tried.

  “Well,” he says, “thanks for coming in, Hope. We’re running short of time so we’ll have to leave it there – but we’ll be in touch.”

  So that’s that.
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br />   I look at the clock, and it’s exactly fifteen minutes since I walked in.

  This has been the longest nine hundred seconds of my life.

  “How was…what on earth happened to you?” Mum stops halfway across the tiles of the hall floor, her teacup midway to her lips.

  “It’s raining.” I kick the front door shut behind me.

  “Is it?” She actually walks to the window, puts the cup and saucer down on the sill and peers out. Like I’ve somehow made the whole thing up and I’m soaking wet because pneumonia is fun. “It is, isn’t it?” She turns around, and she’s already forgotten that I’m behind her: I see her jump. “Well, don’t just stand there. You’re dripping all over the floor!”

  With that warm welcome, she heads back into the kitchen and I can hear her rummaging around in a cupboard for a cloth. If it was, say, Faith who’d come in soaking wet, she might get offered a towel to dry her perfect, perfect self off – but I get a cloth to clear up the mess I’ve made. The joy of being the youngest sister of three, right there. Mind you, it goes both ways: if it’s a choice between being overlooked or in the centre of the full, blinding glare of maternal attention, give me Mum’s benign neglect any day. At least I get to stay a lot further under her radar than Faith and Grace do on the (thankfully) rare occasions they come home for the weekend. Then it’s all, “Grace has done this marvellous thing…” and, “Did I tell you? Faith has single-handedly cured the common cold and brought about world peace, and she didn’t even chip her perfectly-manicured nails in the process.”

  I think that kind of attention would make me shrivel up on the spot. Just as well I don’t get it.

  Mum comes padding back down the hall on bare feet, balancing her cup and saucer in one hand, her phone jammed in between her shoulder and ear as she hands me a floor cloth with the other.

  “Sorry, darling. I have to talk to my supplier about that silk they sent me last week – it was completely the wrong… Yes, I’m still here,” she adds into the phone, then back to me: “You can tell me all about your day over dinner.”

  She gives me an apologetic smile as she nudges her studio door shut behind her, disappearing between brightly coloured bolts of cloth and boxes of pins – and the first thing I feel (other than wet, because there’s really no escaping it) is relief. I’m in the clear – she still thinks I was at the Square Globe. And I guess from her point of view, that’s a pretty safe assumption… But even if I had told her where I was really going, I wouldn’t want to go over the interview right now. Not when the wound is still fresh.

  Wizard ninjas. Good job, Hope. There was so much I wanted to say; so much I could have – should have – said about why I’d be good…and what did I end up sounding passionate about? Eavesdropping on a conversation when I was a kid. Stupid Hope. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  But at least I don’t have to talk about the mess I made of the interview…because she doesn’t know anything about it.

  I could have told her everything – right from the minute I saw the piece about the internships in the paper…but I didn’t.

  I didn’t because, actually, I couldn’t. I don’t want Mum stroking my hair and telling me I should be louder and brighter – like I can somehow wrap myself in the patterned fabric she buys by the metre and be someone else. I don’t want her to tell me I should make more noise about myself. What I want is to not have to talk about me.

  And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Not talk about myself, or the internship at the Earl’s. Not at all. Let everyone think it’s just another normal day in HopeWorld.

  Like talking to Rick Hillier about theatre is a normal day.

  I was just in a room with Rick Hillier, talking to him.

  Talking at him. Like an idiot.

  “You were really good…”

  Yeah, well done. Like he cares what you think, Hope.

  In the safety of my room, I rummage under my bed for my cue cards – which are right where I left them, along with the letter inviting me to the interview which asks me to please be prompt. Ha. I open it out and reread it four times – and every time I find some new way I’ve managed to cock the whole thing up. Like how Charlie Folder Man was the Earl’s front-of-house manager, and the other guy – the one I corrected – was none other than Franklin Hamilton, the owner of the Earl’s, and the one responsible for setting up the new internships and outreach programme I was applying for. So I totally just told him he was wrong about his own theatre.

  Brilliant.

  I screw the letter into a perfect ball and throw both it and my useless cue cards at the bin by my desk. They miss. Of course they do. The cards scatter around it like giant confetti, and the letter bounces into the middle of the black-box model I made of the Old Vic’s stage last month, which sits alongside my bookcase. The paper ball knocks over the tiny scale figure of a man with a shaved head standing in the centre of the stage. I pick him up and straighten him out, putting him back on the little black X that marks the centre of the spotlight, and then I scoop up the cue cards and the letter and drop them into the rubbish.

  Layer by layer, I peel off my wet clothes and let them fall on the floor, trying to ignore the creeping halo of damp that spreads out from underneath the pile, turning the pink of my rug to crimson. (It looks like a bloodstain. Here lies the body of Hope Parker’s dreams. RIP.) I pull on my pyjamas and my favourite old jumper and wrap a towel around my hair, and with every piece of clothing I play back another question in my head. Of course I have the perfect answers now.

  I kick the theatre model across the room.

  It skids across the carpet and glides to a halt in front of my wardrobe, and we eye each other resentfully.

  And then I give in and go pick it up, straightening the now-dented proscenium arch and putting it back on the floor by my shelves…and all the while, the miniature model of Rick Hillier watches me from his cardboard stage.

  Somewhere under my soggy clothes, my phone rings.

  My phone never rings.

  It can only be Priya. I had to tell her about the interview, especially as she was going to cover for me if I needed it, and now I haven’t messaged her the second I got out, she wants to know how it went. Is it okay to answer with “Not well” and hang up?

  She’ll give up in a minute. I’ll message her later.

  My phone keeps ringing.

  And then it stops.

  And starts up again almost immediately.

  That’s not Priya. She knows that if she calls and I don’t answer, I don’t want to talk.

  So who’s calling me?

  I scrabble through the damp pile and yank my phone out of what are quite possibly the wettest jeans that have ever existed. The screen’s a bit…misty, showing a mobile number I don’t recognize.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello! Hope?” A woman’s voice, familiar but barely audible over a loud clattering sound. “Sorry about the noise – can you hear me? It’s Amy. From the Earl’s. You came to the rehearsal room earlier and I wanted to say…”

  You wanted to say thanks for your time, but we’ve decided to give it to someone else. Someone who didn’t make a complete arse of themselves; who looks like they’re half-together. Who turned up on time.

  “…I wanted to say thanks for coming in. It was great to meet you…”

  Mmm-hmmm.

  “…And I’ve had a chat with my colleagues, and I thought I’d call and confirm we’d like you to come in and start on Monday if you’re able to?”

  I…what?

  “Hope? Are you there? Sorry – can you hear me all right?”

  “You’re giving me the placement? You’re sure?” The words come from someone else – whoever it is they’re giving the place to. They aren’t mine. It isn’t me. It can’t be.

  “That’s what I said. We’re giving you the place, if you still want it?”

  “Of course I want it! Yes! But…but why me?”

  Why me? Why am I even asking? Why am I giving them a chance to
realize they’ve made a mistake and change their minds?

  She laughs, and it’s a nice sound. “You had it the minute I read your application, Hope. I just wanted to meet you in person first to make sure you knew what you were getting into. You’re perfect for it – you’re passionate and ambitious and you’ve got more experience than anyone else who applied, but more than that, you understand the job. Anyone can learn the skills but you understand what theatre is, and you understand what it needs to be.”

  “I do?”

  “You do. I guessed that much from your form, but I wanted to be sure. And I could hear it in the way you talked.”

  “Right.”

  I’m not even sure I understand what it is I’m supposed to have understood.

  “Do you need any kind of confirmation letter from us for the time off school? I know the break covers most of it, but if we can help…?”

  “The drama teacher already spoke to the head for me, and I’ve given them a reference letter from the Square Globe, but I’ll ask if they need something from you too.”

  “Great. Let me know on Monday – and please bring that NDA with you. We’ll see you then, ten o’clock at the Earl’s rehearsal rooms.”

  It’s really happening. She means it.

  I have the place. I’m going to work at the Earl’s Theatre.

  Me.

  An actual theatre.

  A professional theatre.

  “Wear something comfortable. I don’t need to tell you how much movement there can be in stage management, so nothing restrictive.”

  “Okay. Yes. Absolutely.” And then, before I can stop it… “And I promise I won’t be late this time.”

  There’s the shortest of silences at the other end of the phone line, and then: “See you Monday.”

  The second the bell rings for lunch at school the next day, I grab my bag and run for the “performance space”. They did try to call it “the auditorium” for a while, but as it’s basically the same as the gym hall, just with a little platform for a stage at one end and a couple of speakers on the walls, that didn’t stick. It only gets used for prize-givings, parents’ evenings and open days, and – once a year – a school show, so “performance space” it is. Today it’s as empty as usual…except for one person sitting in the middle of the platform.