Chapter 32
Arthur
The red carpet is laid. My shoes are polished so I can see my own freshly shaven face in the toe, and Bruce the Butcher has shaved my hair so short that it would be impossible for a strand to stray out of place.
I must have been to a thousand movie premieres, but this one …
this one is the only one that has ever mattered.
The lights aren’t so bright at this one, and the paparazzi don’t line the entryway with a tidal wave of camera flashes ready to wash you out in the press.
At this premiere, I’m here setting it up two hours before it begins.
‘You want to stick these on each of the tables please, Artie?’ Tracy tears open a bag of crisps and empties them into a few small bowls that she shoves towards me. I’ve never been to a premiere that serves scampi fries on the table either, and honestly, they’re missing a trick.
The ancient box TV has been wheeled across from the local primary school and set up in the Big Apple for the evening.
Tracy’s even shrouded it in one of her Christmas tablecloths so she can do a full curtain reveal once everyone takes their seats.
The TV set is so old that we’ve had to transfer the digital file of the film onto a DVD, but there’s something charming about being able to hold all of your work of the last two months in your hands.
The television even has that strong static hum that all the old boxes used to have, and it all just adds to the atmosphere of nostalgia that lives in this place though I’ve only known it for mere months.
All of the tables have been cleaned with such ferocity some look as though they’ve been sanded, with not a trace of spilt stout anywhere in sight.
Old Christmas decorations and those of royal jubilees gone by fill every corner of the pub until it looks like a bomb has gone off in Santa’s workshop, despite the fact it’s early May.
‘You’re sweating.’ Cerys points at me with her free hand and continues to scroll her phone with the other. Even she has got herself dressed up in a satin gown, her short hair pinned back and styled just enough that she looks the part but can’t confess to having put any more effort in than is cool.
‘You are a bit,’ Beatrice tags on as she draws up behind me and threads her arms around my waist. She wears a floor-length gown of patchwork tweed that clings to her like a suit at the top, then fans out at the waist into a flowing skirt.
Of course she’s had to leave her wellies at the door, so she skips across the patterned carpet barefoot.
‘You lot try wearing a three-piece suit in the summer. This is the good stuff too, no polyester shit.’ I unbutton my waistcoat and flash the thick material at the two women, one of whom doesn’t bother to look up, and the other one only grins teasingly.
‘Someone’s nervous.’ Beatrice speaks quietly, still smiling, and though she’s keeping her tone light-hearted, there’s a flicker of seriousness in her words.
‘You okay?’ she asks quietly between just us.
I nod, unconvincingly. ‘You know this is just going a room full of people who love you, right? Nothing to worry about.’
I raise my eyebrow at her and she flushes. ‘Is it now?’ She pushes me away softly by the face, hiding my smug grin behind her hands, and I kiss her palm sloppily until she pulls it away and has to wipe it on the skirt of her dress.
‘You’re gross.’ She sticks out her tongue like a child in the playground.
‘But you love me,’ I reply and her facade slips once more.
Expecting to turn her into a bumbling wreck of denials, what she says next backfires on me, rendering me the blabbering mess.
‘I do, and I have, for quite a while actually.’ She’s confident, sure, and so firm in her words that I have to use all of my energy to stay standing.
Leaving me utterly dumb, she spins on the heel of her bare foot, her skirt swirling around her, and she practically chassés across the room like some sort of nymph that makes you question whether she, or any of this interaction, was ever real or just a beautiful figment of my imagination.
‘Oi, Artie, nuts!’ Tracy’s barked orders as she shoves a paper bowl of peanuts towards me snaps me out of my trance, and I have to remind myself how to walk again as I finish off adorning the tables with bar snacks.
Just as I place down the last jar of pickled onions, my phone buzzes relentlessly in my pocket. Lizzie’s name lights up the screen and I answer it in seconds. ‘All right, Lizzie?’
‘What are you up to?’ She jumps straight into the conversation without a hello.
A little guilt stirs in me. I have all I could have ever asked for, and yet her circumstances haven’t changed.
I haven’t saved her, or cured her; I’ve done everything for myself, and in doing so, I’ve had to leave her behind.
‘I’m just down at the pub with Beatrice.
’ She’s become quite the topic of our conversations; Lizzie doesn’t always remember what I’ve told her but I don’t mind reintroducing her to Beatrice over and over.
I like talking about her. ‘We’re just setting up for a premiere of that film I was telling you that we were making. ’
‘I forgot to tell you, I don’t think I’m a fan of the hair.’ She sounds just like how I remember my older sister, judgey but in a caring sort of way. Instinctively I raise my hand to my hair and brush it over the short strands.
‘Where’s this come from?’ I can’t decide whether to be confused, or suspicious.
Have she and Bea secretly been in contact, slagging off my sense of style and giggling together?
Though the thought terrifies me somewhat, the image of them together, thick as thieves, smiling brightly (even at my expense) warms me and I realise I have concocted a brand-new dream.
‘What are you trying to do, curl it round your ear?’ I stop mid motion as I feel absently at the buzzed wisps, looking about the room for hidden cameras, or hidden sisters. I panic for a moment that I’m going crazy.
‘What on earth?’ I search the pub high and low for I don’t even know what.
‘You really think I’d hide under a table? Not when I’ve got my best frock on.’ She giggles on the other end.
‘Okay, what’s going on?’ It’s not until Tracy points to the front window that I see her, phone pressed to her ear, waving slowly. Throwing my phone down, I rush outside and she meets me at the door with open arms.
‘What?’ I breathe into the hug. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘You think you could get away with not inviting your big sister to the biggest night in your career so far?’ I squeeze her tightly, breathing in the smell of the same shampoo she’s used since we were kids, and it feels as though two parts of my life have joined together in this one hug, in this tiny pub, at the edge of nowhere.
‘How did you get here?’ I have a thousand things I could say to her right now, but I’m still too shocked to think. Lizzie points and I see my grandmother stood behind her for the first time. I was so caught up in my sister that I hadn’t noticed her there.
Without thinking or worrying about any awkwardness, I pull her into a hug and hold her tightly. ‘Thank you.’
She relaxes into the embrace momentarily, before drawing away, wiping the abnormal look of happiness from her face, and replaces it with her regimented seriousness.
‘Right, come on, lad, we’ve got an hour to get this place perfect.
All this standing around playing happy families isn’t going to get anything done. ’
‘Beatrice!’ I’m giddy as I call out her name and we three move into the pub and find the woman who loves me watching us with tears in her eyes. ‘Beatrice, Lizzie. Lizzie, Beatrice.’
Beatrice couldn’t escape my sister’s hug if she wanted to, but it’s clear that it means as much to her as it does to Lizzie. ‘I’m so glad to finally meet you,’ Beatrice breathes into her hair.
‘Me too,’ my sister replies in earnest. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
‘Only good things I hope.’ Beatrice looks to me with an enquiring glare.
‘You should see her, Liz, she’s magnificent.
I think I love her.’ Lizzie embarrasses me with a very well-acted recreation of my blubbery confession a couple of weeks ago.
As much as I want to be irritated at her, I am too hung up on the fact she remembers.
And that she’s here, in the same room as Beatrice, who stands beside me choking on her own saliva at Lizzie’s revelation.
I have never felt more complete in this moment.
It’s evident that today is one of Lizzie’s better days.
On her worst ones she’s unrecognisable, but for this one day, whether it only lasts an hour, or a minute more, my sister has met the only woman I have ever loved and those words sitting together in that way alone is enough to make all of the years of hurt worth it.
When the night falls and the premiere commences, with my sister on one arm, and Beatrice on my other, we walk the red carpet together. Beatrice’s grandfather stops us to wind up his disposable camera to snap several photos, each one with a delay of at least a minute between them.
‘Come on, I haven’t seen her for decades.
Stop hogging my little Lizzie.’ Gran whisks her away until it is just Beatrice and I left alone in the flashes of the New York version of the paparazzi.
Though we’re stood in front of half of the village, it’s the first time all day that I’ve felt like we’ve been properly alone.
‘This is the first one of these I’ve been to where I don’t feel like I’m on the verge of a breakdown,’ I confess, savouring the warmth of her body as she presses against me. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m terrified, but a good kind of scared – the kind that reminds you you’re alive.’