BETWEEN THE ACTS

Act One

             Royal Court, London

Front row, middle seat tickets, for The Cane

Red velvet chairs

And I can’t see my feet, in the dark, but I can hear the sound

Of theatre

Of the side stepped shuffle between seats, and sweets and everyone else’s coats on the arms of chairs

Of whispers and hushes and the creak of Victorian floorboards between the clink of wine glasses

–

The darkness creeps in

Faces in the audience go out, one by one,

And I can’t see my hands

But I squeeze them between my knees

Under my coat

A light comes on – dim gold, from somewhere behind the stage, showing only her in pitch black silhouette

In profile, fringe, ponytail, nose, lips, chin, neck, breasts, waist, hands, thighs, knees, calves, feet

And I’m home

My home, this theatre, this life, this air that suddenly I and she breathe the same,

Is mine again

The fictionalised reality of me – wherein lies comfort, safety, happiness,

Everything I wanted

Is here, now, real

And I can b r e a t h e

–

After the show, I tilt back and forth between the balls of my feet and my heels

Wait at the stage door for 45 minutes

And when she comes out she’s hesitant, bashful,

Sorry…she apologises for taking so long

I don’t like all the people

There’s three of us. And I wait ‘til last

And she talks to me, and me alone

About writing, and TV, and she tells me the secret I wanted to hear most of all

We talk about Gillian, my Gillian, our Gillian, she’s her favourite too, and

You’ve got the Gillian look about you she says

Awkwardly, charmingly,

And she’s half Gillian half Nicola in the way she dips her head when she smiles,

Nervous, embarrassed, and the way we talk about women writers with the same excitement.

And she writes down her address in the book I hug to my chest

And tells me when I write my script,

to send it

to Her.

Act Two

It’s raining,

It’s sluggish and grey and I’m cold and wet through,

But Winter Wonderland is neon lights and log cabins with rising Bavarian steam and tepid mulled wine in polystyrene cups left to kick about

In makeshift gutters

Ice cafes and sky-scraper tall puppets

With slow-moving nightmare eyes and movements that clunk like an unsteady heart

–

I sit in the back room of a run-down pizza restaurant.
the toddler on the table opposite stares at me

under buzzing strip lights

bug-eyed, mouth like a letterbox

regurgitating food down a tomato-stained bib
The parents have more grease in their hair

Than on their pizzas

And their argument doesn’t change in the time it takes

for me to cry and redo my make-up in the dimly lit toilet

Where I rearrange my face

To resemble what is expected

Because it’s my birthday

But, I find the art of almost

harder to replicate

whilst I sit without connection

or internet connection

opposite the woman intent on sharing this moment

with someone else.

On he phone.

This time a blonde called Georgie

Who she thinks I don’t see

Waiting in the wings to take my place,

front, centre,

while I

Exit stage left, too old, too difficult, too different,

and sad

Act Three

February 2020, London.

We drink White Russians in the Low lit bar of the Mayfair hotel.

I lean into her, to kiss her, feel the air thin and light and full of nothing but

Her

When she kisses me back

And smiles

That smile

With those eyes that see everything I am, everything I have been and will be

Then,

Hand-in-hand we take white stairs, giggling, turn a corner and wait, first in line

Taken by surprise by the sudden announcement of,

I need a wee!

By the woman, we have come to see.

–

Inside, in front centre seats we sit,

Holding hands, whispering between kisses, 

feeling the same jolt of excitement,

the same hiss and bubble of disbelief whilst we watch

Anne Reid,

Derek Jacobi,

Sarah Lancashire,

and her,

Nicola Walker

Take the stage

Answer through the confidence of an extrovert, through the experience of an age-old Shakespearian actor, the introverted elegance and the nervy jitterings of four friends in the making.

–

At the after-party we move between television smiles and drink wine between conversations with the people behind the headshots on magazine covers.

We get tipsy

And I love her more.

In this room full of family, full of people, in this room of people who live the lives of characters I wish to create

I stand with this woman, feeling the same,

I stand with this woman, who feels the same.

About me, as I do, about her.

And all the faces blot out, one by one, all the faces I have seen, on the screen, since I was a child, all the faces we were there to see,

And in this flurry of excitement, I feel the world slips away, because it’s her who makes this all the more wonderful, her who takes my hand and runs reruns of our evening just as eagerly.

Her who lies naked with me in our hotel bed, who touches me and kisses me

Her who turns everything to magic.