Chapter 32
‘Sorry, you’re .?.?. what?’
The round freckled face gazed up at her.
‘I’m not going to be able to be in the show tonight.’
‘Rowley, what are you talking about? Without you there is no show. Do your parents not realise that?’
‘No, see, the thing is, me granda has got sick and me ma is doing a wedding at her job, and somebody has to be there to look after him, in case his oxygen levels get too low. ’Cause then he could die.’
Oh, for God’s sake. She could feel the whole edifice wobbling like when you slide the last Jenga block out from the bottom .?.?.
‘Don’t worry, Rowley, that’s quite understandable, these things happen. Martin knows the lines and can easily step into your part,’ Marisha purred.
Cassie was horrified. Poor Martin had forgotten the few lines he ever knew. He was prepared to dress in the green costume his mother had made, and his only job was to give people a leg up onto a raised platform, which was supposed to be in the clouds. More than that, he couldn’t do it: he couldn’t sing, he wasn’t funny, he’d be a disaster. But Marisha really didn’t seem to care about the impact this would have on him.
Cassie knew some people would say she was being fanatical, and illnesses happened – or maybe it was the soothing tone of Marisha’s voice, exuding satisfaction, that she couldn’t stomach, but something had to be done.
Break time came and, without a word, she slipped out and made her way to the office. To her relief, there was no sign of Roger Newcombe. Helen, the secretary, was sitting listlessly on the swivel chair, which was patched with masking tape, dunking a custard cream in her coffee. She jumped guiltily when she saw Cassie.
‘Helen, I need your help, it’s an emergency,’ she hissed. She explained the situation and how she needed Rowley’s mam’s phone number; at the prospect of a bit of intrigue, the secretary looked more energised than Cassie had ever seen her. Strictly speaking, Cassie explained, this was an educational call for a student’s benefit. She copied down the number and address, and slipped out to her car. It was a long shot, but she was past caring.
‘Mrs Adams? I’m so sorry to bother you. This is Cassie, Rowley’s substitute teacher, I don’t believe we’ve met. The thing is, I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but your son is an extremely talented performer,’ Cassie began.
In that moment, Rowley’s mam’s voice rose an octave. ‘That’s what I always said. I’ve seen that in him as a little tot.’
‘Mrs Adams, if he doesn’t take his place on this show, it could alter the whole course of his life.’
She was giving it welly but if there was ever a time to speak up, it was now.
‘I know, love .?.?. but what am I to do? I have to work. My father can’t be left alone.’
‘We’ll collect him.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sure your father would love to see his grandson on stage. We’ll pick him up with his wheelchair before the show and pop him in the front row. He’ll have the best seat in the house. I give you my word I’ll keep an eye on him myself to make sure he’s all right and, afterwards, I’ll drop them both home.’
The voice sounded quite emotional. ‘You’d do that for us?’
‘It’d be my pleasure.’
‘You really think he’s that good?’
‘Mrs Adams, I know it. He’s a natural. I only wish you were there to see him.’
‘His daddy passed away three years ago and since then it’s been hard.’
She could hear the tough facade cracking.
‘I’m so sorry to hear that and I understand.’
‘But if you’d do that for my son .?.?. that’d mean the world to me.’
And so, it was settled. Rowley would go home as usual, and Cassie would pick him and his granda up at six.
*?*?*
Marisha wasn’t impressed. She’d been busy rustling together a costume made out of several sacks tied with a curtain cord for Martin, who looked wretched.
‘You’ve just violated GDPR with that call. This is a disciplinary offence. I hope you realise that.’
She’d never come closer to telling Marisha to fuck off. Don’t give her the ammunition, she reminded herself.
That lunchtime the staffroom was buzzing. A second microwave had been purchased following a whip-round and there was intense controversy around who’d contributed and who hadn’t, and therefore wasn’t entitled to use it.
Further down the pecking order was gossip about tonight’s show. This included opinions ranging from ‘Well, at least that racket will be over’ to ‘Isn’t it great that such a young class are doing something so ambitious? Let’s hope they don’t fall flat on their faces.’
Nonetheless, they were all going to turn up to support. Babs and Denise had organised their Fifth and Sixth Classes to help out and serve refreshments.
An intermittent drilling sound was coming from the assembly hall as the carpenter dad had taken a day off work from his job as a kitchen fitter to assemble the set, which wasn’t improving the headaches in the staffroom.
*?*?*
Back at her flat after school, Cassie had just about managed to jump in the shower and wash her hair, and was wrapping herself in towels, when her phone buzzed a notification. Her heart leaped when she saw it was Finn.
Missing you. Hoping tonight is as good as you deserve. xxx
What she deserved? What did anyone deserve?
Thank you. I hope so too ? xxx
She hesitated about adding ‘missing you’ but then thought, What’s the point?
It said so much less than she felt, but maybe that was just as well. She really didn’t have the energy for any extra drama today.
She chose a dark floral-patterned maxi dress to go with her green suede Doc Martens and styled her hair half-up, half-down. Not bad, she thought, finishing off her makeup with a mulberry shade of lipstick, even if tonight’s not all about me.
*?*?*
At a quarter to six she pulled up to Rowley Adams’s home, a battered-looking terraced house in front of a scraggy green space where children were playing. His mother emerged through the door, a broad-shouldered grey-haired woman wearing what looked like a professional waitress outfit under her anorak. She looked like someone who, under other circumstances, could be formidable, but underneath you could sense the weariness. She waved at Cassie.
‘Ah, there you are, I’m off to work. I’m after giving the two of them their tea. My father has his oxygen canister and the mask if, God forbid, he needs it. Rowley will show you everything. God love him, he’s up to ninety about tonight.’
She stopped by Cassie’s car. ‘And thanks, for what you’ve done for Rowley, for all of us. Not everyone thinks like you. I won’t forget it.’
‘Thank you for trusting me. I’m only sorry you won’t be there.’
‘Me too, but sure, the money won’t earn itself.’
With that, she bustled off towards a desolate-looking bus stop in the distance as Cassie went through the open front door to have Granda’s care explained to her by his ten-year-old grandson.
Not a bother to Rowley. The wheelchair was set up with Granda Anthony installed in it, a blanket round his knees, the oxygen canister stored underneath.
‘I love a show,’ he wheezily explained. ‘I used to manage the cabarets on the cruises.’
Cassie glanced around the house. It was spotlessly clean but everything looked old: the sofas, the TV, the wallpaper – it looked like no money had been spent on anything in years. They were just living day-to-day, she reflected guiltily. Some of us don’t know we’re alive.
*?*?*
The school hall was buzzing when they arrived. Mr Daly, the groundsman, had volunteered as technician and was up on his tallest ladder focusing the lights, based on where everyone would hopefully stand, if nothing went disastrously wrong.
Class 4B were getting into their costumes, aided by Fifth- and Sixth-Class girls. Cassie swung into action. She set up the mirrors and her makeup box, and distributed sponges and makeup for the oldest, most confident girls and one absolute whizz of a boy to do their bases. The next hour felt like ten minutes as they got the children ready for their characters – and, she was delighted to observe, they all looked very distinctive. The children were wild with excitement and nerves. A few of the younger ones were overwhelmed and burst into tears, while a bucket had to be grabbed for someone who was sick. Cassie had a supply of tissues and allocated the older children, who were delighted with their responsibility, to look after them. Granda was already in place with a mug of tea, shouting genially up to Mr Daly as best he could, despite the oxygen cannula. Roger Newcombe was hovering around nervously as Mr Daly proceeded to run through the sound cues with each child. Whether any of these would materialise at the right volume or in the right order on the night was anybody’s guess.
There was no sign of Marisha. Surely she wasn’t going to boycott the event?
From seven thirty onwards they could hear mammies, daddies, siblings, other pupils and a very decent showing of teachers, some of whom had taken the opportunity to make a night of it and head to the pub before the show.
‘I can hear my daddy’s laugh,’ squeaked one little villager. Inevitably, at ten to eight, everyone needed the loo all at once.
At five to eight there was a ripple in the atmosphere: through a crack in the curtains, Cassie could see Marisha approaching up the centre aisle. She was dressed in a long purple dress, sailing through the audience, smiling graciously to left and right as parents reached out to shake her hand. Cassie practically laughed. There really were two ways of looking at the world: you did the work or you looked for the credit. Sometimes they coincided; mostly they didn’t, but right now she couldn’t give a hoot.
At 8 p.m. she gave the ‘go’ signal to Mr Daly on the walkie-talkie and the opening music started. A huge cheer rose up from the audience. Oh help, Cassie thought, that’s really going to throw them. Not a bit of it. This was not Sophie’s first show, not by a long shot – the girl waited for the applause to die away then surfed the wave, full of Celtic tragedy: ‘The Lord save us, Jack, but there’s not a red penny left between us and the poorhouse .?.?. There’s nothing for us in this world but hunger and desolation and death .’
The Bondarenko twins stumbled on in the cow costume, which didn’t look too bad, but they lost their co-ordination and tottered around a bit, causing hilarity from the children in the audience, not to mention the back row of slightly blotto teachers.
The play continued more-or-less as rehearsed, which was a miracle in itself. Trevor as Jack delighted the kids with his homage to Spiderman; Sophie was excellent as the mother and Cassie could hear lots of appreciative whispers of ‘She’s very good, isn’t she?’ to her parents’ pride.
Jack came on in one scene, lamenting what a terrible day it’d been and how he’d been scammed out of his cow by a conman. In despair, he threw a handful of jelly beans out the window. At this point Mr Daly managed to dim most of the lights apart from one bulb, which blazed away merrily, in spite of his efforts.
Martin, as the beanstalk, had been lying behind a plywood bush since before the show, and was starting to get bored and fidget, but thankfully he remembered his cue and scrabbled to his feet to the wonderment of the smallest children.
‘Miracle-Gro!’ roared Babs from the back to the whole row’s amusement. Oh hell, once hecklers got going, they’d only encourage each other. She spotted Roger Newcombe sniggering behind his hand. Trevor as Jack appeared in his Spiderman pyjamas to climb the beanstalk, which everyone loved.
‘This is lit!’ he announced at the sight of the beanstalk. ‘We’ve got to make a TikTok video.’
Again, Mr Daly had to hit a music cue, which was correct, except deafeningly loud. After everyone yelled, he pulled it back down to a level where the reedy voices of the few kids who actually knew all the words could be heard. The rest were clearly miming nervously. They shuffled through a few hip-hop moves, at which point Jack announced that he’d got half a million likes already. Which seemed unlikely, even to the Junior Infants.
Jack got a leg up from Martin to the upper level, which was supposed to be the castle in the sky, and hid himself in a cupboard before Rowley, the giant, made his entrance, dressed in a silver Elvis suit complete with cloak.
‘You’re not a giant!!’
‘Oh, yes I am!’ he replied, setting up his stepladder. ‘D’ye like me new ladder? I’m after nickin’ it from Woodie’s,’ he began. ‘I’d a terrible job hidin’ it under me jumper. I had to nick a sunlounger to hide it. But, listen, do yez ever get bored? I do get very bored up here in the clouds, and the Wi-Fi’s no good, even with me hotspot on, so I have to play me guitar. Do yez want to hear it?’
There was a chorus of ‘Yeaaaah,’ and a few rogue ‘No’s from the wits in the audience.
‘Right then, Ahmed, you’re on!’ he yelled.
Ahmed and his electric guitar struggled to make their entrance through an unfeasibly narrow door, and were accompanied by a wince-inducing splintering sound. Cassie gritted her teeth but, mercifully, the scenery wall held.
‘Hit it, Mr Daly .?.?.’
Mr Daly was clearly starting to enjoy the celebrity status his job was affording him and responded with a thumbs up.
For the first time ever the two boys tore through their routine without a single mistake, Ahmed daring to play his four chords with panache and Rowley rocking the vocals like someone four times his age. The audience were on their feet, dancing. Granda, on the verge of leaping out of his wheelchair, had his fist in the air. Cassie was horrified. If he collapsed, she’d be totally responsible.
The goose waddled on and announced she laid Gold American Express cards.
‘Would she lay one for me?’ yelled Babs from the back to hoots of laughter.
At the end, just as Jack was straining to cut down the tree, a group of younger boys and girls came out with placards, chanting ‘Save the beanstalk!’ and ‘We don’t want a has-bean-stalk!’ and tied a red ribbon around Martin. Then the people and the giant agreed to share the world together, so long as he could piggyback on their Wi-Fi, and they all started singing the old Three Dog Night rock anthem ‘Joy to the World’, with new words to include the beanstalk. The whole audience were on their feet with their arms in the air, swaying in unison.
Finally, the show came to a close with Sophie tearfully declaring how, now she had a Gold American Express card, they’d no longer be poor and destitute and she could shop online for the rest of her life.
Rowley’s granda was accepting compliments from all around and basking in reflected glory. Ahmed’s parents were glowing with pride at their son’s guitar playing after a year of lessons. Sophie’s parents quietly thanked Cassie, before loudly praising Marisha. But Cassie knew that, if you hadn’t done the work, then compliments felt meaningless. Something had changed for her, she realised: the kids’ success was her success. They’d way surpassed their own expectations, and that meant everything.
*?*?*
By 11 p.m., Rowley and Granda were delivered back home, and between herself and Rowley they lifted the frail body out of his wheelchair and onto the sofa. He’d be able to boast that he was at Rowley’s first gig, he announced. Though, looking at Granda, with his ancient veined hands clutching his blanket, Cassie was painfully aware that he mightn’t see too many more.
By midnight she finally hauled herself through the door of the apartment, which felt deafeningly quiet after the mayhem of the show. For an instant she felt the compulsion to text Finn and tell him how the show had been a blast, that the kids had been a revelation, but she realised, even before the thought had fully formed, that it was pointless. As she was staring at her phone, a notification buzzed and Philip’s name flashed up. It was a text from him:
I heard it was a triumph, big congrats!
Phil had obviously heard all the gossip from his pal Roger. She smiled.
TKS. What a rollercoaster! Airport 4.45 a.m. tomorrow .?.?. Today!
You’ll do it. Keep it simple. ?
As she collapsed into bed, it registered briefly in her overstuffed brain that Philip had never once let her down.