Chapter 13
Violet
‘You sat on some teasels,’ Violet replied, in an amused tone.
Finn was still trying to look.
‘Tsk, stand still,’ Violet said.
‘What’s a teasel?’ Finn asked from his bent-over position.
‘It’s like a big, dried thistle head,’ Violet said.
The thistle heads were nestled into the curve of Finn’s bum, the thorns hooked into the wool of his trousers.
Violet hadn’t expected that her day would involve Finn bending over and asking her to look at his arse, but it was a very pleasant view. She resisted a sudden urge to smack it.
‘Why would there be a giant thistle on a chair?’ Finn said in an incredulous voice.
‘Some stately homes use them as a way to stop people from sitting on furniture. They’re an alternative to ugly signs saying Don’t plonk your big arse here.’
‘I don’t have a big arse.’
‘Well, that’s what you sat on.’
Violet shrugged and started to waddle away. Finn, still hunched over, peered over his shoulder at her.
‘Violet, what are you doing? Is the teasel still there?’
Violet nodded. ‘Yes. It’s there.’
Finn glared. ‘Well, can you remove it?’
Violet raised an eyebrow.
Finn sighed.
‘Can you remove the teasel from my arse, please? If you don’t, I will start talking about tinkling mountain streams and running water and the sea lapping at—’
‘Okay, okay.’ Violet danced a jig and hurried back. ‘I’m doing it. Bend forward again.’
Violet squatted behind Finn and started to carefully prise the teasel away from the woollen fabric of his trousers.
The little hooks, shaped like tiny crochet needles, were embedded into the fabric.
She needed to get them out without damaging the costume.
Finn’s comfort was a secondary consideration.
‘You’re enjoying this,’ Finn growled, as she worked carefully.
‘You know,’ she said, as she tried to get hold of the teasel without pricking her fingers or stroking Finn’s bum. ‘We need to check that chair. I heard a crack as you sat down. Probably fragile and priceless, and that’s why there were teasels on it in the first place.’
‘Great,’ Finn grumbled.
Violet gently sat one teasel on the floor. ‘One down, one to go.’
Violet had had her share of strange backstage happenings in her time as a stage manager.
There was the time she’d had to throw a shoe at a lead cast member in the wings, because his mic went live early and his swearing at another cast member was being broadcast across the theatre.
The actor had done the scene with a dusty footprint across his back.
Or the time a gunshot sound effect failed.
The actor froze on stage, and she had hissed, ‘Die!’ from the wings, and the actor dropped to the floor.
And the time the Assistant Stage Manager overloaded the food colouring for the ‘red wine’ and the entire cast of The Taming of the Shrew looked like demonic vampires by the interval.
She had spent the 20-minute break running around yelling at everyone to brush their teeth and rinse and spit, rinse and spit!
And once, when she was an ASM herself, her SM hadn’t checked the wings before calling curtain.
Violet, who had been fixing a prop and was late to get clear, found herself on stage when the curtain rose.
She had had to clumsily dance her way off at the start of the Dream Ballet in Oklahoma!
But never had she found herself crouched down inches from the well-formed rear end of her lead cast member, trying to pick thorns from the seat of his trousers.
She winced as one of the thorns turned itself on her, and she flicked the tiny splinter away, before carefully prising the second teasel head fully off.
‘There,’ Violet said, rocking back on her heels. ‘Teasel free.’
She carefully placed the teasels on an ancient and expensive-looking table as a thorn-free Finn went and crouched down near the chair, bending to look underneath. Tipping it back slightly so he could see the underside, he swore.
‘Gimme the teasels,’ he waved his hand at Violet.
‘Finn, they are a bit squashed, they—’
He looked up, his face pale. He gently put the chair back down and took the teasels from Violet, arranging them on the seat, then stood back to assess his handiwork.
‘Is it damaged?’ Violet asked quietly.
Finn looked at her, dark eyes wide. ‘Maybe, mmmhmmm.’
Violet’s bladder screamed, and she clamped her thighs together and took a breath.
Finn looked at her earnestly.
‘What are we going to do, Vi? About the chair? I’m such an idiot.’
Violet took in his anxious expression. Nothing good would come from telling anyone that Finn accidentally broke a chair. Keep it civil and formal, she reminded herself.
‘We are going to keep a secret, Finn. Aren’t we? I never saw you sit in that chair, did I?’
A look of relief crossed his face.
‘What chair?’
A smile flickered on his face, and for a moment, Violet stared into his dark eyes. Then her bladder screeched and threatened to burst the button off her jeans, and she tore her eyes away.
‘We need to get out of here.’ She hurried back to the door, bending to examine the handle again. ‘You know, if this is really broken, maybe we can actually get the ceramic knob off and then turn the door mechanism manually somehow.’
She started fiddling with the doorknob. A moment later, Finn joined her. They were side by side now, alternately peering at and grappling with the ceramic knob. She could feel the heat from Finn’s body, and his arm kept brushing hers.
‘Let me do it,’ he said, bumping her out of the way with his hip.
An involuntary giggle escaped Violet’s mouth, and she clapped her hand to her mouth as if smothering the hiccups. Finn glanced up, and she pulled her face into neutral.
‘I think,’ Finn said, bending down to squint under the handle, ‘there should be a little screw or something here.’ He tapped the underside of the doorknob.
‘We need to find something to try and turn it with to get the handle off.’ He stared at Violet.
‘You must have something on you. You’re Little Miss Girl Guide Stage Manager.
Surely you’ve got a screwdriver or an Allen key on you or something? ’
Violet shook her head sadly. ‘I used to always have a multi-tool on me, but not anymore.’
Finn started pulling open drawers on cabinets, chests of drawers, peering inside in case the antiques turned out to be over-the-top toolboxes.
Violet showed willing and opened a blanket box at the foot of the huge bed with little hope.
It was empty except for a few sheets of yellowing old newspaper at the bottom.
She needed urgently to get out of this room for two reasons: 1.
She hadn’t needed the loo so desperately since she had drunk three pints of bad cider at a festival and queued for thirty minutes for a dirty Portaloo before giving up and peeing in a bush while her friend held up a beach towel for some privacy. 2. Finn had made her giggle.
The pressure to pee was turning into acute pain. She glanced over at Finn, rifling through leaflets in a bedside drawer, his tousled, dark hair falling forward. Violet swallowed. She needed to get out of the room now. She checked her phone—still no bars.
‘For God’s sake,’ she muttered, crab walking back to the door. ‘It’s clearly already broken. How hard can it be to get it off?’
With that, she grasped the handle and pulled hard.
Finn had left the table and stepped behind her to watch the outcome of this new approach.
As she yanked and pulled, leaning her body weight into it, feet braced, the ceramic doorknob came free.
Violet crashed backwards into Finn, as the doorknob flew out of her hands and over her head.
Finn’s arms caught her around her waist, and her back was pressed against his chest as they both staggered backwards.
A split second later, there was a smashing sound, followed by the sound of things falling onto the carpet, and a dull thud.
‘Oh, Violet,’ Finn whispered, as they wobbled to a stop, his breath tickling the hair by her ear.
His arms were still wrapped around her from behind, her head pressed back into his shoulder.
She had the sudden thought that she wished he said her name like that more often.
She could feel the rise and fall of Finn’s chest against her back, the spread of his fingers over her stomach.
In the strangest way, it was the calmest she had felt in weeks.
Violet wasn’t sure how long they stood like that for.
It felt like minutes, but it was probably just a few seconds.
Then her bladder bulged, and she sucked in a breath as she stepped forward out of his arms. She could have sworn he held on for a moment longer than necessary, his fingers digging into her waist for a split second before grazing down her hips.
The smashing noise was echoing around her head, and she turned around slowly, shoulders hunched, knees pressed together as her entire mid-section clamped down on her painful swollen bladder.
Finn took a few steps away from her towards the large marble fireplace and peered down.
‘What is it?’ she asked in a tremulous voice, squinting through half-opened eyes, too worried to look.
‘It’s a vase, I think,’ he said. ‘Was a vase.’
Finn crouched down and started poking through the shards of ceramic littered about the floor in front of the fire.
Violet’s eyes fell on a second vase sitting at the other end of the mantelpiece, the blue and white colours the same as the shards littering the rug.
It looked old and irreplaceable. Her stomach roiled, and her bladder screamed.
Things were about to get very real in here, and a rug was going to get ruined along with a chair and a vase.
‘Oh god.’ She bent forward, hands on her knees. ‘That’s it, I’m getting fired. We’re not supposed to be in this room, and we’re not supposed to touch anything!’