Page 20 of A Snowfall of Silver

This draws a hesitant smile; she gives me another of those careful looks, as though she’s taking my measure. Her face relaxes, and the smile grows. “Me too.”

“Besides, Nora will show us the ropes,” I say.

“Don’t you find her dreadfully intimidating?” Alma asks.

“Not a bit,” I tell her. “I know she looks so glamorous, but she’s been really kind to me.”

“That’s a relief.” Alma slumps back against her pillows. “Because everyone I’ve met so far has been intimidating as anything. Apart from Kit, of course.”

“No, Kit’s not scary,” I agree. “Do you know each other well?” I don’t know why but I feel a strange sort of possessive feeling. Kit is my friend.

“Only from rehearsals,” Alma says, a slight flush rising in her cheeks. “He’s very kind.”

“Mmm,” I murmur noncommittally. “And what about the other actors?”

“They seem nice.” She sounds a lot less certain now. “I don’t know them very well.” She hesitates, then says confidingly, “Russ and Viola don’t seem that fond of each other.”

“I think they are probably having a big love affair,” I say. “Squabbling lovers, you know, like something Shakespearean. They pretend to hate each other, but deep down it’s all trembling passion and swooning and—”

Nora sticks her head around the door. “Freya, you’d better come and grab your bag from the van,” she says. “Then we’ll all head over to the theatre – dress rehearsal in an hour. Get your skates on.” She flashes a grin at Alma. “You too – it’s all hands on deck. Things are about to get very busy.”

Nora sweeps from the room, leaving us scrambling in her wake. Alma looks both thrilled and nervous and I am sure those exact emotions are reflected on my own face.

“This is it, I suppose,” I say, giving her an encouraging smile. “Now it all really starts!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I miss most of the rehearsal. As soon as we reach the theatre, a large brick building set on the corner of a busy road with a higgledy-piggledy backstage area and a decent-sized auditorium, Nora has me unpacking and pressing and steaming and organizing an endless parade of costumes. Each costume has many parts to it, and they must all be treated as carefully as if they were delicate invalids, and we their weary yet devoted nurses.

Nora is a perfectionist with an eye for detail. “There’s a loose thread there.” She gestures at the claret-coloured gown in my hands, and swoops down, a pair of gleaming silver scissors already in hand to snip the offending thread, barely visible up this close, let alone in the audience.

I admire her attention to the small things. I find it soothing to do this methodical, practical work. There’s a richness to it as well, one that comes from seeing and experiencing the level of detail that goes into a performance – the things the audience may not notice individually, but that become part of their larger impression of the play. Like the embroidery on the bodice of this claret dress. It had been my idea to add it, in gold thread that catches the lights and adds to the sense of opulence onstage.

“You’ve got a good eye for this.” Nora’s voice breaks into my thoughts, and she gestures to the embroidery that I have been considering. “That’s neat work, and you were right about it finishing off the gown.”

I feel a glow of pride at that.

When we’re finally done (for the time being, anyway), and Nora tells me to take a break, I slip into the back of the auditorium to get a glimpse at what’s happening onstage. It is there, sitting up high, lost in the shadows, that I get my first glimpse of Eileen Turner.

It is only her and Rhys Cantwell on the stage and they are deep in conversation, their voices an indistinguishable murmur, as they discuss some finer point of her performance. Mr Cantwell suddenly throws his head back and laughs, a sharp bark of laughter and the first I have heard from him. Is she funny? Somehow I never imagined that.

I drink in the sight of her. She’s smaller than I imagined, but then I suppose it’s difficult to imagine your hero being anything but larger than life. Yet here she is, slight and delicate-looking. I search her face for a glimpse of the young woman in the photograph that is still hanging on my wall in Cornwall. She’s in her seventies now, and her face is beautiful, elfin, with high cheekbones. Instead of the endless waves falling to her knees, her hair is silvery white and cropped short. She’ll be wearing wigs during her performance.

She steps away from Mr Cantwell and moves towards the centre of the empty stage. She pulls her shoulders back, and suddenly she’s not small at all – she’s a force, a hypnotizing, whirling force of nature. She becomes – in front of my eyes, and despite the lack of make-up or costume – Lady Bracknell, a difficult, haughty, overbearing woman who is used to getting her own way.

“Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.”

Her voice rings through the air, and it’s a wonderful voice. Deep for a woman, and warm, she lingers on “t”s, and compresses some of the words, giving them a rhythm, a particular music that is unique to her. It’s a voice that, once heard, you would recognize anywhere.

She finishes her bit of dialogue and then, as easily as one would slip off a coat, she sheds Lady Bracknell and moves forward, Eileen Turner once more, to talk to Mr Cantwell.

I sit, stunned, as the rest of the cast appear. Kit, his red-gold hair shining under the lights, steps onstage and begins calling to others in the wings. Directions about the scenery, I presume. Mr Cantwell gathers them all together and begins speaking to them. I watch Viola; she is rapt, nodding earnestly, all her attention pinned to his face. Russ sits on the edge of the stage, leaning back on one hand, the very picture of relaxed nonchalance. Dan and Daphne, who are playing the two other lead roles, stand slightly to one side like naughty school children – I see Dan whisper in Daphne’s ear, and she stifles a laugh, swatting at him with her hand.

I wish I could hear what they were saying. I wish I was up there with them. I want it, with a ferocity that makes my heart pound. Here I am – so close and yet, still, so far away.

“There you are!” Nora exclaims behind me. “Come on, we’ve got work to do, break’s over.” She must see something of my feelings in my face, because her expression softens. “And Lindsey the make-up girl has just turned up with a tin of biscuits. Let’s go and put the kettle on.”

I scramble to my feet. Biscuits may be the only thing to help ease this particular pain. I follow her out of the auditorium, casting one last, longing look over my shoulder at the stage, at the actors and their director lost in their play.