15

Monday, 9 October 2023

Davina was back in the office on Monday morning, to Hattie’s relief, and for once seemed relatively attentive to the job at hand. Hattie talked her through the progress she’d made on props in her absence, and handed back to her the tasks that were still outstanding. Davina got stuck into them with vigour, and within minutes had a first achievement, arranging delivery of a set of golf clubs that Hattie had convinced a sporting goods store to lend them the previous week. She gave a delighted chuckle as she crossed it off the to-do list, and for a brief moment Hattie wondered if maybe the props situation was finally under control.

But then, over the course of the morning, a series of messages came through from Kiki in the rehearsal room with requests for new props. Hashi was apparently finally turning his attention to such trivialities as where the actors were supposed to be standing at any given moment, and what they were supposed to be doing when they were there. As a result, and as he had threatened in the previous production meeting, new ideas were evidently flooding in. Suddenly they were being asked to provide two ‘timeless’ chairs, no make that four, plus two umbrellas, and could those chairs be replaced by shooting sticks, and by the way the whole of act one is now being set outdoors in the rain, and Hashi wants to know whether it would be possible to get our hands on some real or realistic shotguns, and actually it’s only three shooting sticks and one stool, oh, and as a general note can all the props hint at the 1920s without being too explicit about it… ?

Davina responded to the constant stream of new requirements with at first mild alarm and then rising panic, until Hattie persuaded her that the safest thing would be to ignore absolutely everything until the end of the day, and then take stock, rather than waste time following orders that would probably be countermanded within the hour anyway. There was plenty to be getting on with from the previous week’s requests, and if those were then cancelled… well, that would be something to worry about tomorrow.

Hattie, though, had another problem: she couldn’t get hold of Steve. She’d wanted to check in with him about something small, and he hadn’t answered his phone. Which, in itself, would be nothing. Except that he didn’t call her back, and soon after she got a call from Laura the head of lighting, asking if Steve was with her.

‘I’ve been trying all weekend to chase him up, ever since the production meeting on Friday, about what rigging hardware they have at the Tavistock. I don’t suppose you know what he’s up to today?’

Hattie didn’t, and couldn’t help but remember how out of sorts he’d seemed on Friday, after Keith went public about the mask being taken. Of course, there were all sorts of reasons why, from Friday lunchtime to the middle of Monday, he might not be answering his phone. And he was a friend, of a sort, and she trusted him. But an awful lot of people were acting a bit strangely when it came to the mask, and in that light, his disappearing act did raise a couple of questions. Hattie resolved to keep trying him when she could.

Mid-morning, Hattie made a cup of tea for herself and brought Davina one too, and encouraged her to take a quick break.

‘Did you have a nice weekend?’ she asked.

‘Um… yes. Yes I suppose I did, in the end,’ replied Davina. ‘I’m feeling much better now, at any rate.’

‘Oh good. I have to say, you’re looking much better.’

‘Well I think I finally got some closure on… you know.’

‘Did you speak to him in the end, then?’ asked Hattie hopefully, remembering her conversation with Shane the previous week.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Davina, calmly. ‘Sort of the opposite really. I discovered that the reason he hasn’t been responding is because he’s actually blocked my number. I even reached out to his new… to my replacement, who confirmed it. And once I learned he’d done that, I finally understood just how much, and for how long a time, I’ve misunderstood what sort of person he really is. And now I know that, I don’t miss him any more. I’m still angry with him, but I can cope with that. I know how to be angry. I had a couple of conversations with some friends, who helped me put things into perspective. And I think I’m fine now.’

Hattie frowned. Either she too had badly misjudged Shane’s character, or Davina’s side of the story was missing some key elements, or… Hmm. She resolved to get to the bottom of this. Still, if for the time being Davina was back, functioning and focused, then perhaps she shouldn’t do too much to rock the boat.

Davina’s problem, Hattie decided, was that, having fallen for the world of theatre, she couldn’t stop herself also falling for theatre people. It wasn’t that Hattie was opposed to the romantic side of things; she had to concede that, married as she was to a lampie, she was in no position to condemn fraternising with colleagues. No, it wasn’t about romance so much as romanticism. Davina hero-worshipped, she idolised. She did what she was told by directors not because that was a stage manager’s job, but because she believed directors to be infallible. She complimented actors not just because it was a professional courtesy that helped smooth the lines of communication, but because she honestly believed that what they did was something magical. But that was the thing. Yes, theatre was magical. If you were going to stick around in the industry, you had to believe that. A spoonful of starry-eyed naïveté was the sugar that helped the medicine of long hours, late nights and low pay go down. But when it came to the theatre people, a healthy dose of cynicism was much more important. You couldn’t let yourself be bowled over by an insightful director, a good-looking actor, or a charismatic carpentry tutor, otherwise they’d walk all over you, personally and professionally. At least, that’s what Hattie thought, but she didn’t have a clue how to convey any of it to Davina.

Their break was interrupted early by the arrival of a van dropping off a large metal dustbin at the main reception. They took delivery, wrote out a receipt and then carried the thing back to the office.

‘Looks good,’ said Davina. ‘Big, sturdy. Does it have a “twenties” feel, though?’

Hattie sighed. ‘That’s a point. You’d better take a look at what dustbins looked like in the 1920s.’

‘In which country?’

‘Any country. Ideally one where dustbins just happened to look a little bit like this one. If we can convince Hashi that this bin is at least compatible with a 1920s setting, that’ll make our lives a lot easier.’

Davina set to work, and soon found a vintage photography website with a black and white picture of a girl sitting in a high chair outside, with a big metal dustbin that wasn’t a million miles off what was now sitting in the office.

‘There we go,’ she said, pointing at her screen. ‘1929. I’m not sure where this was taken, but in the description they call it a “trash can” so my guess is it’s American. Good enough?’

‘Good enough,’ confirmed Hattie. She took a picture and messaged it to Kiki, with accompanying text:

We’ve got a big 1920s metal bin for you. Do you still want it?

Kiki replied instantly:

Let me check with Hashi.

A few minutes later she sent another message:

Yes! (Thank God.) Can you bring it over in time for this arvo’s session? Sorry.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ muttered Hattie.

‘Hmm?’ asked Davina.

‘The good news is they like the bin. The bad news is they like it so much they want it in the rehearsal room today.’

‘Can we just stick it in a van?’

‘Could do. But a short notice van hire is an expense we really don’t want to be footing right now.’

She folded her arms and took a long look at the bin.

‘Not sure it would fit in an Uber, be a pain to get it up and down escalators on the tube… Shall we take it on the bus?’

‘Would they let us?’ asked Davina dubiously.

‘We can try. If we sweet talk the driver they might let us, especially if it’s not too full. It’ll be slow, but the 360 will take us almost door to door.’

‘I just… don’t want to get yelled at…’ said Davina awkwardly.

‘I’m sure no one will yell,’ Hattie reassured her. There probably were some rules against taking outsize items on public transport, but you had to be prepared to bend the rules sometimes. Davina needed to learn to get comfortable doing that. But, seeing the reluctance in her eyes, Hattie yielded, adding, ‘Equally, we need someone to stay here to take delivery of those golf clubs if they turn up. So how about you help me lug this thing to the bus stop, and I’ll take it from there?’

‘Good idea,’ replied Davina, obviously relieved.

So, half an hour later Hattie found herself standing beside a large metal bin, resting a hand atop it to stop the lid sliding off at every turn, on board a red single-decker bus as it wove its way south and east through busy, noisy London streets. Not for the first time, she had a moment to reflect on the ridiculousness of the job. On the one hand, it was the most sensible thing in the world: the director wanted this item in the rehearsal room, it was on the wrong side of town, and they didn’t have the budget to hire a van, so why wouldn’t she haul the thing along via bus? On the other hand, it was easily a couple of hours out of her day, and her hourly rate was high enough that, if you included that in the cost, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just get a van? But then again, the cost of paying Hattie’s wages was the same no matter how the bin got moved; the only difference was in how much unpaid overtime she put in to catch up later. So, buses it was.

Lugging the thing the hundred yards from the bus stop to St Eustace’s was tough, and nearly got the better of her; by the time she pushed the bin through the rehearsal room door she was red and puffing, and couldn’t help making an unprofessionally loud clatter as she entered.

‘Ah! Yes. Perfect,’ exclaimed Hashi. ‘Well, almost perfect. Can we paint it gold?’

‘Gold?’ repeated Hattie, trying to catch her breath.

‘Yes, gold. As a stylistic thing. I’ll double-check with Raven, but I think gold would be ideal.’

‘Sorry, it’s a borrow. Has to be returned as-is.’

‘Oh,’ said Hashi, crestfallen. ‘Well… it’ll have to do I suppose. For now. Keep an eye out for one we can paint, eh?’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Hattie, making a mental promise to do no such thing.

Hashi had already turned back to the scene being rehearsed, so Hattie stowed the bin in a corner as quietly as she could, and then took a moment to survey the room. Once again, the whole company was there. They’d all been called in pretty much every day, and clearly for a lot of them, especially those with small parts, the novelty had largely worn off. Several were engrossed in phones or books, and Emile was lying, supine, on what appeared to be a small inflatable mattress, once again dead to the world. Bums was sitting in front of the makeshift shrine to Atlanta she had collaged together of photos and Post-its, and her hand idly stroked the wall as she watched the rehearsal. Kiki was at her desk, scribbling furiously, trying to keep up with the fiendishly complex and constantly revised blocking that Hashi was working out with his actors. Hattie was pleased to see that they were finally working within the confines of the Tavistock stage, as marked out in chalk on the floor, and for the first time appeared to be giving some consideration to what the scene might look like to an audience. Things still seemed fairly stylised, but no longer totally unintelligible.

Perhaps the biggest change was the sound, or rather the absence of it. For once there were no harsh, grating noises blaring from Miguel’s speakers. No weather effects, no industrial machinery, nothing. In the absence of sound cues Miguel was sitting quietly at his desk, fiddling with what appeared to be a Rubik’s cube on steroids: instead of having six sides, this one appeared to have about twenty, its faces delineated not just by colour but by symbol as well.

Hattie sidled up to him.

‘No soundscape for this scene, then?’ she whispered.

Miguel looked round at her. His hand self-consciously went up to try to mask his shiner, which had now bruised into an ugly purple with greeny-yellow edges.

‘The soundscapes have been cut,’ he whispered back.

‘What, all of them?’

Miguel shrugged.

‘He doesn’t want them any more. Says they’re too obvious.’

‘I see. Er, Miguel, are you… all right?’ asked Hattie, pointing at his eye.

Miguel’s expression immediately went determinedly neutral.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure? Because that looks…’

‘Yes I’m fine,’ he cut in quickly, loudly enough that a couple of people turned their heads.

‘Fair enough,’ whispered Hattie. This wasn’t like Miguel at all, normally so polite and eager to please.

‘If you ever want to talk about anything…’ she tried, but Miguel made no response, simply turning back to watch the actors rehearse.

When she got back to ACDA Hattie took a detour on her way to the SM office, and stopped by the workshop. There were now several things she needed to talk to Shane about.

Once again, it was hellishly loud: the second years had made plenty of progress since last week, judging by the pile of amorphous wooden structures laid out in the centre of the space, and they were still beavering away, bashing and cutting and heaving at huge sheets of plywood and enormous lengths of lumber. Shane was doing the rounds, inspecting a join here, offering advice on a tricky bevel cut there, picking flecks of sawdust out of his tea along the way and at all times looking characteristically sage-like.

Hattie started to pick her way over to him, but was nearly flattened by a strip of two by four, which came whistling round at her head out of nowhere. She flinched away, and it missed her by millimetres.

‘Oh God, sorry!’ came an alarmed cry from near the wall, where a student was holding on to the far end of said two by four, looking mortified. ‘I didn’t see you! I was so focused on not slicing my fingers off with the bandsaw of doom.’

‘Now, Lauren, we’ve talked about this, haven’t we?’ admonished Shane. ‘Don’t focus. Focus is narrowing, it’s restrictive, and in a workshop environment it can get you in trouble. Instead of cultivating focus, cultivate awareness.’

Lauren nodded, like an eager acolyte receiving wisdom from a revered guru.

‘Yes, Shane. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you.’

Shane nodded at her, and she, thus dismissed, turned back to her work. He caught Hattie’s eye, giving her a tiny smirk, which Hattie reciprocated. She had started to like him a lot more when she realised that his philosopher persona was at least in part an act.

‘Office?’ he asked, gesturing.

Hattie nodded, and they made their way to the relative quiet of his lean-to.

‘So what can I do for you today?’ he asked, pleasantly.

‘Oh, it’s related to my project at the Tavistock. I was hoping I could talk to you about aluminium,’ Hattie replied, thinking she might as well start with the easiest conversation on her mental to-do list.

‘Oh yeah? What about it?’

‘Hypothetically speaking, if I had a small padlock, about yea big’ – she held up a finger and thumb – ‘and the body was made of aluminium, and it was attached to one of those yellow hazardous material cupboards, and I wanted to melt the padlock off, in situ, what kind of equipment would I need?’

Shane’s eyes widened in bemusement.

‘I’m sorry, you say this is a hypothetical?’

Hattie nodded, and Shane took a breath, seemingly considering his words carefully.

‘Look… I know that Keith’s a bit of a bastard, and I’m sorry if he’s screwed you over. Being frank, he did the same to me once. He didn’t pay me for some work I did, and I’m still out of pocket. But I think I might know the cupboard you’re talking about, and I really don’t think you want to go down the road of breaking and entering.’

Hattie couldn’t help but smile.

‘I promise you, I’ve got no intention of doing any lock-melting myself, and I’m not helping anyone else either. It’s just a rather, erm, delicate matter I’ve been asked to make some discreet enquiries about. Is that OK?’

Shane frowned, then shook his head. ‘I mean… sure. Crikey, you move in mysterious ways, don’t you? OK, well, for starters you don’t want to melt the lock. Get a pair of bolt-cutters, that’ll get you in much faster.’

‘OK, but let’s say I was dead set on melting it, for whatever reason. What would I need?’

Shane paused and considered again.

‘Well, aluminium has a fairly low melting temperature, so that’s in your favour. Even one of those hand-held little kitchen blowtorches would get it hot enough in theory, but in practice, the flame of those is so small that it’d take absolutely ages. So you’re probably looking at some slightly more serious kit that’s harder to lug around. Either way though, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of mess. COSHH cupboards are generally made of steel, so they won’t melt, but you’d be hard pressed not to wreck the paint job, leaving scorch marks everywhere, and kicking up a bunch of smoke and fumes. Good luck if there’s a smoke alarm about.’

Hattie thought for a second. This was sounding less and less plausible.

‘And would there be anything you could think of that would give the appearance of melting the lock, but that didn’t use heat? Like, say, dissolving it in acid?’

Shane chuckled. ‘Well, I have to say I’m not too familiar with acids. It’s all sounding a bit Hollywood to me. You might be better off asking a chemist whether that would work. All I would say is, my guess is that corroding a lump of aluminium with acid would also be noisy, smoky and smelly. I can’t imagine it would be a subtle thing.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Hattie, disappointed. Well, on to the next item on her agenda. ‘While I’m here, I wonder if I could ask your opinion on something. There’s a young man among the first years, Felix he’s called. Have you come across him?’

‘Felix? Yeah, I know him. He won’t last long, will he?’ replied Shane, shaking his head.

‘No?’

‘No. I mean, he’s completely disengaged. Won’t get anything done unless you’re actually standing over him, barking orders. Mark’ll kick him out by the end of term, and no bad thing if I’m honest. People like him just sap energy from a group.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Hattie. ‘I was hoping it was just that he didn’t like stage management. I thought maybe you’d tell me he was a bit more keen in the workshop.’

‘I can honestly say I’ve never seen anyone so disinterested,’ Shane said solemnly. ‘It’d be comical if it wasn’t so frustrating. It’s like he hates it here.’

‘Ah well,’ replied Hattie. ‘I’m going to try to have a chat with him. Maybe he’ll explain what’s up. Well, thanks for your time, as always. I’ll let you get back to it.’

She started to leave, and then forced herself to stop. Just because she didn’t want to talk about the last item on her list didn’t mean she could let herself not talk about it.

‘The only other thing I wanted to mention was… Davina.’

‘Oh yeah,’ replied Shane, smiling. ‘Yeah, thanks for prodding me about that. I gave her a ring over the weekend, just to touch base. We had a lovely chat, and I think she really needed it. You know, she got dumped recently. And look, she wouldn’t tell me who by, but to be honest it kind of sounded like it was someone she shouldn’t have been seeing in the first place. I really hope it doesn’t turn out to have been a staff member here. Either way, I think she needed to hear a friendly voice. I hope I was able to help her.’

Hattie forced a smile, but underneath she was feeling deeply frustrated. What an idiot. She’d blindly assumed that Shane was Davina’s illicit former paramour, and hadn’t even bothered to check, and now here was yet one more puzzle for which she had no answer: who on earth was it who Davina had been seeing? Just once, it would be nice to reach the end of the day with fewer mysteries than there had been at the beginning.

She thanked Shane again for his time, and made her way back to the SM office. But here she was to discover that the day had not yet finished dispensing mysteries to her. Because, waiting for her in the office, was the mask.