Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-four
Saturday’s full run-through had been rescheduled for Monday afternoon. Billy had just picked Sid up from school. Sid’s cheeks were two red apples, and his gloves were caked in snow. Billy pulled them off him and took them outside to beat off the excess ice.
“Ah good, we have our Tiny Tim at last. Now we can begin. Places, please, everybody! Spit spot!” Gideon ordered.
People began hurrying in different directions. Ahmed took to the stage, as did the narrators: Carly, Hiroshi, Ricco, Winston, and Ernest (the Lonely Farts had been roped into playing bit parts because no one was safe from Gideon’s monomania for casting). Ricco and Isabel—aka Scrooge’s nephew and Roberta Cratchit—waited in the wings for the start of Scene 2. Hesther and Kingsley shuffled up beside them dragging Scrooge’s front door, which had been made to stand up by itself by wooden struts nailed into the framework at the back.
Harriet was in the opposite stage wing on her hands and knees, with her phone clasped to her ear as she held a meeting with the Special Educational Needs Coordinator at Foss Independent while trying to make sense of the black sacks of costumes Mallory had brought from the Great Foss Players archives and the donations from the public, which had been steadily growing since Gideon had given a shout-out from the local radio station asking for vintage Victoriana.
By the time the meeting had ended, she had separated the clothes into piles. The costumes left over from the Great Foss Players’ production of Little Women the year before last would come in most handy, while their outfits from Starlight Express and Cats were less useful. She had a call with a parent in an hour and a stack of emails from Cornell that had come through so thick and fast that for a moment she thought her account had been hacked. She was coming to the conclusion that something was going to have to give, but she didn’t know which ball she could afford to drop.
“Miss?”
Harriet looked up, feeling dazed by her monumental to-do list, to find Billy standing above her. “Billy.” She smiled, mentally compartmentalizing her life. “How can I help?”
“There’s some people want to see you,” he said, jerking his head backward.
She looked around his legs to see a group of people dressed in combats and camouflage standing in the opposite wing. She gave them a wave and they waved back enthusiastically.
“Righty-ho,” she said, groaning as she got up off the floor. “I noticed you picked Sid up from after-school club again today. Are Tess and Arthur okay?”
“They’re fine. Stop asking.”
Hmmmm. Tell that to the nagging feeling in her stomach.
“Did I see Grace leave with you?” she asked.
“Yeah, she wanted to surprise Sid—she took us to the café on the corner for cake.”
“That was very kind of her.”
Billy shrugged.
“You would tell me if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you?”
Her phone blipped with a text, and in the short time it took her to check it, Billy had slipped away, no doubt to steel himself for his appearance as Roberta Cratchit’s careworn husband.
“Chains!” Gideon’s voice rang out. “Destiny, my sweet jewel, where are your chains? What is Jacob Marley without his chains?”
Harriet cast a glance across the way to see Leo and Sid sat on chairs on either side of Dhruv, a mass of gray paper chains draped across all three of them and snaking along the floor.
“We’re working as fast as we can, Captain!” Dhruv shouted in a Scottish accent. “But we’re running out of spit!”
Harriet sniggered as she slipped behind the stage on her way to meet the newcomers.
“Hello, I’m Harriet,” she said, smiling when she reached them.
A woman about her age with her hair pulled back in a high ponytail and a distinct air of the Tomb Raider about her stepped forward, smiling and holding out her hand for Harriet to shake.
“Hi! I’m Cassidy. We’re the Relic Hunters.”
Did not see that coming!
Cassidy must have seen her quizzical expression as she shook her hand because she added, “We’re detectorists. You know, metal detectors?”
“Oh, I see.” Harriet took her hand back. “Good to meet you. Are you detectoring around these parts?” She thought of the basement and what could be lurking under that dirt floor.
“No, well, yes, we are, but not here in this theater. We used to meet once a week at the community center—”
“Ah, say no more. This is pretty much the new clubhouse for community center evictees.” Harriet smiled warmly at the new group.
“I did recognize quite a few faces on my way through,” said Cassidy. “Anyway, we heard about what you were doing here, and we thought maybe we could help each other out. If we could borrow a quiet corner to hold our Relic Hunter meetings, we’d be happy to offer our services toward your play.”
“You know about our production of A Christmas Carol ?”
“Everybody does,” said a grinning man with the hair on either side of his head shaved off and a tattoo of what Harriet presumed was the Holy Grail on his neck. Another man, with a handlebar mustache, stepped forward and shook Harriet’s hand, his other hand clasped with that of a petite woman with long rainbow plaits who singsonged, “Hello!” in a tiny voice.
“You’re the talk of the town,” added a man with eyes the color of periwinkles behind his small round glasses. “Literally. It’s all over the Little Beck Foss socials.”
“Some of us are into medieval reenactment,” said Cassidy, “and we know our way around a sewing machine. We bumped into a couple of the Lonely Farts in the foyer, and they said it was going to be all hands to the thread to get the costumes ready in time. So put us to work!”
“Seamsters!” Harriet clasped her hands below her chin in wonder. “I feel like you guys were sent here by Father Christmas. We are in dire need of people who can make alterations. But just so you know, I would have let you have your meetings here regardless of whether you’d offered to help out or not. This is a community space for as long as we have it, and you are all very welcome. Make yourselves at home. There’s usually a steady stream of baked goods coming out of the kitchen that you are welcome to partake of; we only ask that everyone pitches in with a couple of quid, if you can spare it. In fact, I do believe Prescilla and Ernest have been baking batches of mince pies up there this afternoon.”
As she said this, a whoop went up from the auditorium, and she heard Hiroshi shout, “Here they are!” followed by a stampede of feet across the stage.
“Players! Players, please!” Gideon’s impassioned plea cut through the noise. “The mince pies will still be there after the run-through!”
“They won’t be hot, though!” returned Destiny. “Don’t you worry yourself, Gideon, I can eat and act, I’m a professional.”
Harriet left the Relic Hunters to settle in and stole around to the front of the stage to watch the run-through. She spotted James sitting in the stalls a few rows back and made her way over to him. On the stage, Destiny aka Jacob Marley was wailing, “ Mankind was my business! ”
“It’s a pity Evaline isn’t here to see this,” Harriet whispered in James’s ear. “She could learn a lesson or two from Jacob Marley.”
He smiled. “She’s not so bad.”
“Your loyalty to her is rather touching. I’m not sure she deserves it.”
“I understand her, that’s all. If I were truly loyal, I probably would have tried to stop you from inviting every displaced club within a ten-mile radius into the theater.”
“Do you really think you could have stopped me?” she challenged.
His chuckle was low and rumbling. “No. I don’t think I could.”
“Will you tell Evaline about your legal surgery?”
“Perhaps.”
“What about your practice?”
“I spoke to my partners this afternoon, and they’ve given their blessing.”
“Do you think Lyra will come to the performance?”
She felt his shoulders stiffen.
“I’d like to ask her to,” he said cautiously.
“I’d like that too.” She took his hand and felt his shoulders relax. “James?” She wasn’t sure how to broach this subject, or if it even needed a label, but the part of her that liked things in their places had been poised with a Post-it note and pen ever since their heart-to-heart on Friday.
“Yes?” He cocked his head to one side when she didn’t say anything.
Heavens to Betsy, what am I? Thirteen? Just ask him already!
“I was just wondering, um. Are we a thing?”
He quirked an eyebrow.
“After our behavior in my car on Saturday night, do you even need to ask?”
She flushed at the remembrance of her wantonness. She’d already had one run-in with the police recently; she didn’t need to risk being charged with outraging public decency. He was rubbing circles over her palm with his thumb now. She cleared her throat.
“Yes, but we’ve engaged in a couple of encounters previous to the car and that didn’t make us a thing.”
“Didn’t it?”
Oh!
“Did it?” she asked. “That night at my flat, you know, before the table incident, you’d said you kissed me and shouldn’t have done.”
“Yes. I did say that. I didn’t want to be that man who takes advantage of a woman when she’s in a vulnerable state, and you were feeling vulnerable when I kissed you. Less so when you started shouting at me.” He gave her a wry smile, and she remembered their argument that had led to christening her hall table. “And it didn’t seem fair of me to start something with you when I wasn’t being completely up-front about my situation. I guess you could say I was suffering from conflicting emotions.”
She bit her lip. “Right. So you wanted us to be a thing but not just then?”
“That’s about the size of it. I was never interested in a throwaway encounter with you. From the moment I met you, I knew I wanted more.” He turned in his chair to face her, and she inhaled sharply at the intensity of his gaze. “And I realize that my surprise daughter wasn’t exactly in keeping with pursuing an open and honest dialogue,” he went on. “If anything could throw you off the scent of my desire for a relationship, it would be that. But I am learning quickly from my mistakes because I meant what I said: I want something meaningful. With you. If you’d like that too?”
There’s that word again! Meaningful. She could feel her heart pounding hard and fast. Cripes! That was very romantic! She was experiencing sensations of extreme excitement, exhilaration, and fear, like she was about to be hit by a bus driven by George Clooney blowing kisses at her. Are relationships supposed to make you feel like you’re about to be hit by a bus? He’s waiting for an answer.
“I’d kind of thought you’d meant in a generalized sense.” Her voice came out squeaky.
“A generalized meaningfulness ?” He was looking at her with amusement in his eyes. “Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?”
“Oh god! Why am I such a tit?” she wondered out loud.
James burst out a laugh that was incongruous with Grace’s onstage performance as the Ghost of Christmas Past escorting Scrooge back to his childhood. Gideon swiveled on his Cuban heels and glared at them.
“Is there something funny about a man confronting the aching sadness of his past?” he demanded.
Harriet and James slipped down in their seats.
“Would you like to share the joke with everyone?” Gideon continued.
“Oh, um, no, thank you,” said James, offering a surrendering wave.
“Sorry,” Harriet offered at the same time.
With a final death stare in their direction, Gideon turned back to the stage. “From the top of Act One, Scene Eight, if you please, Grace and Ahmed,” he instructed, and the action on the stage began again.
In the darkness, still slunk down in their seats, James took Harriet’s hand.
“Would you like to be officially in a thing with me?” he asked.
She smiled so hard she could feel her cheeks stretching. “Yes, please.”
He squeezed her hand, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. On the stage, Ahmed and Grace continued in their parts while all around the Winter Theater, people were making new connections, breaking down barriers, and sealing friendships. The theater was becoming a living, breathing ark, picking up survivors and rescuing them from loneliness.
On Wednesday afternoon another group made homeless by budget cuts joined the merry band of misfits at the theater. Harriet had settled the new arrivals—the Under-Fives Story-Timers—on the newly varnished parquet dance floor in the cocktail lounge, away from the colorful language of the Lonely Farts Club and Relic Hunters members, who were working on the set building under the careful direction of Farahnoush and Hesther.
“Josef, may I have a word?” Harriet called him away from painting a papier-maché goose for the Cratchits’ dinner table.
He ambled over, smiling as always.
“Hello, my dear, how may I be of service?”
Harriet pulled an electric menorah from her bag and handed it to him.
“I wanted to give you this. It’s almost Hanukkah, and I thought it would be nice to have something to mark the occasion here at the theater. Especially since you’re very kindly helping us with our Christmas production. I know it’s not got real candles,” she said apologetically. “But I didn’t want to risk burning the theater down.”
Josef’s face was luminescent. “It’s wonderful!” he said. “How thoughtful.”
“And if you’d like, we—that is to say, us lot”—she waved her hand around the auditorium—“thought it would be nice to hold a celebratory Hanukkah meal for you, here on the fifteenth with everyone.”
“I would love that more than you know!” He beamed, his hands clasped in front of his face.
“I’m glad.” She couldn’t help but mirror his smile. “We have so many people of different faiths here, it makes my heart happy. If we get to keep our community space after the theater is sold, I would like to celebrate them all if we can; Eid, Diwali, we’ve got a couple of Pagans in the Relic Hunters…”
“Ooh, winter and summer solstices, I’ll be in charge of the wassail,” put in Josef. “I have a fabulous recipe from a good friend down in Rowan Thorp. And Eid will give me the chance to perfect my gulab jamun.”
Harriet laughed. “Sounds like a plan,” she said.
Josef left to find a street-facing windowsill for his menorah, and Harriet went to see Leo, who was nervously pacing the stage while Ken and his mighty maintenance crew affixed the first backcloth to the track system that would allow the backdrops to be raised and dropped during the show.
“Do you feel proud?” Harriet asked him. She was certainly proud. If anyone prodded her, she had the feeling that she’d burst like a glitter pi?ata.
“Kinda, I guess,” Leo replied shyly.
“Ready, Leo, my boy?” came Ken’s sonorous voice from behind the stage curtains. Really, with a voice that resounding, it was a waste that he hadn’t pursued a career on the stage.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and came to gather in the middle aisle, shuffling left and right along the stalls to get a good view. Billy and Ricco had sprinted out of the auditorium moments earlier to gather the rest of the maintenance team, who now trickled onto the balcony and into the royal boxes to watch.
“Ready!” Leo called back, his voice small in the sudden and unusual silence. Ricco scooted back and wriggled in beside him just in time.
The first backcloth dropped down at the back of the stage, and a gasp of appreciation rippled through the theater. It was Scrooge’s office, with two large leaded windows drawing the eye out onto the snowy street beyond. Images of ragged children, snowballs poised for flight in raised hands, and carol singers in bright bonnets were lit by gas lamps. Inside, the office wall was cracked and peeling, a shelf with one candle and one book hung between the windows, a mouse hole in the skirting board below. After a few moments of stunned silence as the audience took it all in, a round of appreciative applause went up.
Ken stomped along the stage and down the steps to join the crowd in the aisle.
“Aye, you’ve done a grand job, lad,” he said, rubbing at his eye with a meaty hand as the clapping died down. “Bloody hell, son, I think you’ve brought a tear to me eye.”
“You’re not the only one,” said Odette, sniffing.
In fact, there were multiple sniffles rising out of the auditorium. Harriet’s eyes were so clouded by tears that the backcloth had gone into soft focus. She felt James’s arm around her, and he pulled her close. She stiffened and then relaxed into his embrace. This was a public declaration to match the one they had made privately to each other. People would talk. The famous five would definitely talk. Let them , she thought. She sniffed and surreptitiously wiped her face on James’s jumper.
“Did you just wipe your nose on my sweater?” he whispered.
“Little bit,” she replied, laughing wetly into her sleeve.
“I’ll allow it,” he said, squeezing her closer.
“You have a rare talent, Leo,” James observed. It was a sentiment that was echoed about the space.
Leo shrugged and made a sort of grunting noise. “Thanks,” he said self-consciously. “But I had a lot of help.”
“Which you managed expertly,” Farahnoush said, smiling. “Take the compliment. You deserve it. I worked in design for twenty years before I arrived in Britain; I know an artist when I see one.”
“See!” said Ricco, who was squeezing Leo tightly around the waist. “I told you; you were brilliant.” He kissed his cheek, and Leo smiled bashfully.
“Right!” said Ken, making everyone jump. “Let’s get the next one rigged up. How many will there be altogether, Leo?”
“Fifteen. We’ve got four more to finish painting.”
“Bloody hell, lad, it’s like the Oscars of backcloths!”
Leo laughed, his blush visible even in the dark of the auditorium. Ken strode back behind the stage, shouting orders as he stomped.
“We need to take photographs of every backcloth in situ,” said Harriet, pulling out her phone and beginning to snap pictures. “I’ve managed to get quite a few of you while you’ve been working on them.”
“Why?” he asked.
“For your portfolio. This is amazing stuff, Leo. Imagine how impressive this will be if you want to apply for art colleges.”
“Which you definitely should,” added James.
James’s encouragement of her kids threw another log on her already smoldering feelings toward him. He was so far from the cold fish she had encountered that day in the police station.
“Yeah, but I’ve had loads of help painting them,” Leo objected.
“To be fair, babe, it’s practically been painting by numbers,” said Carly. “I love you and everything, but you are a classic micromanager.”
“You are very particular with your vision,” said Ava delicately.
“Like Steve Jobs with a paintbrush,” added Hiroshi, and everybody sniggered.
“This is exactly the kind of project that art colleges would be wetting their pants over,” said Harriet, getting the conversation back on track. “So, anyone who can, get pictures of the artist at work, and we’ll start putting together a portfolio.” If this didn’t instill the boy with some confidence in his talent, nothing would.
People began to drift back to what they’d been doing before.
James had to leave for a meeting with some of Evaline’s financial advisors, but he drew Harriet into one of the dark corners of the theater first to steal a kiss. He smelled like bergamot shower gel, sandalwood, and freshly ironed cotton, and she breathed him in as their lips pressed together, one kiss leading to another, then another. His low moan sent a spike of pleasure down her stomach, making her breath hitch and her grip on his back tighten.
“Kissing you is my new favorite pastime.” He smiled against her mouth, his voice raspy with desire.
“It’s good to have hobbies,” she answered breathlessly.
“It could become an obsession.”
“We can but hope.”
“I have to go.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’ll come back later to walk you home.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I know.”
After one last kiss goodbye, James left for his meeting. She hid in the corner for a few minutes longer, fanning her face and rearranging her pinafore, which had become rucked up during some very unprofessional bottom grabbing. Kissing James always left her breathless and wanting more. Every kiss felt like a small promise. She didn’t need extravagant declarations of forever. She was a practical, independent woman of a certain age, and what she wanted was this, one small daily promise which said, Today I am yours, today we promise to be each other’s . Maybe they would make that one small promise to each other every day for the rest of their lives, or maybe they wouldn’t. For now, she couldn’t think of anything better than committing wholeheartedly to one day at a time.