Theatre Magic – Seven Scenes from Show Business

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Scribe Doll

“Let’s meet at the office,” says D., our producer.

The “office” is Muffinsky’s, in Covent Garden, where the first one to arrive grabs the table by the back window, overlooking St Paul’s Church.  The Actors’ Church.  D. pulls out the A4 spiral notebook where he keeps amending the figures of the budget.  I hand out copies of the amended script, and B. spouts tap dance choreography terms, while ensuring the cups of cappuccino, Americano and steamed milk with hazelnut syrup do not get knocked over.  “The script has to grow organically,” says B.

“I don’t want any tinny synthesisers in my show.  I want strings – lots of strings,” I say.

D. pulls out the calculator.

Three people trying to put on a show.  A musical.  Three people no one has ever heard of – yet.

*         *         *

T. slipped a disc, this morning.  He walks into the theatre, holding onto the door frame, and winces as he makes his way onto the stage two hours before the show opens.  My directorial debut.  “You can’t go on like that,” I say.  “You’re in too much pain.  I’ll go and cancel tonight.”

T. grabs my wrist and holds it tight.  There’s anger in his pale green eyes.  Also intense disappointment.  The disappointment of one who fears he has failed topass on his craft to his apprentice.  “Listen to me, little one.”  His voice is deep and his articulation like a finely cut diamond.  “Listen and learn.  You never cancel a show.  Never – unless the actor’s dead or the theatre’s burnt down.”

He releases his grip.  I slide my wrist out, take his hand and give it a firm squeeze.  “All right.  We’ll go on.  Let’s just re-block that scene so there’s less pressure on your back.”

I’ve worked with T. before.  I watched him go on stage, play a comedy and bring the house down the night after his father died.  Nobody knew.  Nobody suspected.

 *         *         *

Looking around, you would think the 2008 Credit Crunch isn’t happening.  Waiters in black waistcoats rush to top up your glass of champagne.  Others bring trays overloaded with hors d’oeuvre.  Expensive food.  Photographers snake through the crowds and flash a spurt of bright white light in people’s faces, which bounces off the metallic glitter on women’s dresses.  Arms go around shoulders, groups huddle together, champagne flutes are held up high, smiles are fixed in anticipation.  You never know, your picture might be in The Stage, next week.

You can barely hear yourself think in the hub.  You peer through the dim light, trying to spot that elusive casting director.  You congratulate the star of the show.  “Oh, did you really like it, darling? Oh, that’s so lovely of you.”

You decide to travel up the wide, winding staircase, just so you can swoop down it.  You imagine yourself as Mame, or Dolly, or any Jerry Herman heroine.  You float down evenly, balletically, back straight, head high and always level, wearing a faraway look.  You’re Eliza Doolittle at the Embassy Ball and everyone is looking up at you, their jaws down to the floor.  Well, one person is looking at you.  The one trying to walk up past you, wondering why you are taking up the entire width of the staircase.

The opening party of a West End musical.  All glitter, champagne and dreams.  It’s just a business.  But it’s magnificent.

*         *         *

His footsteps tip tap on the linoleum floor as he walks down the corridor.  The girl outside the audition room ticks his name off the list on her clipboard.  He looks older than the others.  He sits on the free chair, and changes his brogues into a pair of two-tone tap shoes.  He checks that the steel taps on his toes and heels aren’t screwed on too tight.  Just loose enough to vibrate against the wooden floor.  The girl hears the auditionees whisper to one another.  “That’s him.  He taught me to tap.  I owe it all to him.  If he’s auditioning for this, I might as well go home.”

One of the boys stands up and shakes the older man’s hand.  The girl with the clipboard is intrigued.  She goes into the audition room, to ask if they are ready, and asks if she may watch this one.  “Do come in,” she then tells the man with the two-tone tap shoes and introduces him to the panel.

He hands the pianist a music score and sets the tempo.

Afterwards, the girl with the clipboard listens to the director, choreographer and producer.

“He can certainly tap.”

“The best we’ve seen, by far.”

“He’ll wipe the floor with everyone else.”

“He’s like Astaire.”

The girl with the clipboard smiles to herself.

“Yes, but his style isn’t quite like the others’.”

“Perhaps he’ll be too sure of himself.”

“He’ll start telling us what to do.”

“Hmm… He won’t fit in.”

The girl with the clipboard bites her tongue.  The sense of injustice is burning inside her.

*         *         *

He knows it will take him at least half an hour to leave the theatre.  There’s always a group of people waiting for him at Stage Door.  When he comes out of his dressing room, they hand him programmes open at the page with his photo, ready for him to sign.

His number gets the biggest cheer in the show.  An acrobatic number in which he dances his way up a tall scaffolding, at full speed and well-rehearsed recklessness.  He always makes it look so easy.  As he swings off the metal poles, and pirouettes on the wooden platforms, the audience hold their breath, afraid he might fall.  By the time he reaches the top, the roaring applause is a blend of admiration and relief.

He hands his costume to the dresser and begins to unwrap the bandage on his knee, revealing several surgery scars.  That’s when the pain hits him.  He steps into the shower.  The fans will have to wait.  The hot water helps soothe the pain.  He digs his fingertips deep into the knee cap, massaging gently.  Recently, the pain in his knee has worsened.  The orthopaedic surgeon has advised him not to dance for a while.  A while.  That is what doctors call it.  The beginning of the end.  He forces himself out of the panic.  He is thirty-nine.  Still a few more years to go – up to ten, if he’s lucky.  Most other dancers he knows did not retire till their fifties.  He strokes his knee, pleading silently.

*         *         *

It’s a small theatre above a South London pub.  Nobody gets paid, unless there’s a profit.  Of course there’s never a profit.  The only profession you fight to be in, stay in, even when you know you won’t get paid.  No teacher, lawyer, stockbroker or politician would work unpaid for this long.  But then this isn’t a job – it’s a lifestyle.  It’s not your profession – it’s who you are.  Take that away, and you take away the very thing that is you.

The Company gathers on stage for the Act I Finale.  Everyone belts out the song, as though every note were the last.  There is no holding back.  This is the real thing.  A strand of your soul flies out there with every word and every dance move, yet you know that a new, even stronger strand grows back in its place.  You are limitless.  You more you give, the more you have to give.

There’s a woman sitting in the front row, her smile beaming at all the performers.  She knows you all.  Something in her eyes seems a part of you and of all this.  Yet her eyes are sad.  And she is dressed not like an artist but as someone who works in the City.  During the interval, she walks down the stairs to the bar.  Her friend supports her.  The theatre manager notices her from a distance.  “Hey! Look who’s here!” he shouts.  “How’s your new well-paid job, stranger?”

The woman does not reply and he is suddenly running up the steps towards her.  He hugs her.  “There, there, darling, it’s only a show,” he says, kissing her on the head.  She is sobbing, her tears soaking through his shirt.  She cannot speak.  She just trembles as he holds her tight.  “I know, I know,” he whispers.  “You miss showbiz.”

 *         *         *

End of Act I.  An open top car is racing along the coast, chasing after baddies from a country called Vulgaria.  In it, a widower and eccentric inventor, his two children, and a blonde young woman with a pink frock and a cut-glass accent.  It’s dark and foggy and the driver can’t see the edge of the cliff.  The car is falling off the cliff at Beachy Head.  The passengers scream.  The car nosedives.  The audience hold their breath.  Suddenly, the car sprouts wings.  Red and yellow wings spread open under the side doors, and lift the car up again.  There’s a loud applause as the car flies off the stage and swerves over the heads of the people in the front rows of the auditorium.  Suddenly, everyone – you included – is six years old.  The car is actually flying over your head, all glossy, all lit up, with its red and yellow wings billowing in the wind.  You clap as hard as you can, happiness swelling in your chest, practically bursting through your rib cage.

Scribe Doll

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Autumn as a Touchstone

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Scribe Doll

I asked to have my latte at my usual small round table just outside the door, on the step above the pavement, while the weather still allows it.  Soon, it will be too cold or too wet, and I will relocate to a table indoors, and watch life parade along Wimbledon Village High Street through the window with wooden frames painted in aqua green.  Soon, the soundtrack of passing cars will be replaced by the clunk of cups and the roar of the coffee machine.

But not yet.

The chill in the breeze that makes waves in the canvas canopy of the Pâtisserie is just a warning of the cold to come.  The sky, mottled in purple grey, is still but an idle threat.  At the neighbouring tables, people are clinging to what is left of the summer, although vests are now hidden under hooded tops, jeans cover the fading tan on shins, and solid colour cardigans are thrown over the bright floral patterns of cotton dresses.

A man walks past, carrying a bouquet of pink roses.  He smiles to himself.  I picture him, in a few months’ time, still be smiling to himself, and carrying – if no longer roses – then something appropriate to the season, but always with a gift for his beloved in his hands.

Across the street, a woman leans out of her window and waters the plants in the long, stoneware pot on the sill.  Plants that have grown and flowered over the summer, which she will soon wrap in protective cellophane and keep warm, that they may survive the winter and bloom again in the spring.  The woman has no power over the elements, so she puts her trust in them.

The High Street is suddenly bathed in soft golden sunlight.  A couple walking hand in hand stop in front of my table, kiss, then smile at each other, their eyes aglow with promise.  I watch them resume their walk, and imagine their sunlit kisses turning into warm embraces by the steady glow of a winter fire.

As though it has been reading over my shoulder, and taken umbrage at my earlier assumptions about it, the sky grows dark and unleashes a heavy shower onto the canopy above my head.  The wind decides to join in the mischief, and blows the rain towards the tables.  There is a sudden rush and upset chairs, as people grab their cups and plates, and take refuge indoors.  My table is in a sheltered corner, so I do not have to move.  Seeing my complacency, the wind dares me by splashing a few drops of rain onto my notepad.  The black ink spreads into a few splotches on the page.  That’s all right.  I can take a joke, and the wind knows you do not take the game too far with friends.  It retreats from me and, instead, gives the canopy a violent shake, swipes a soggy newspaper from one of the tables, then blows into the necks of passers-by who have broken into a run in an attempt to escape.  The wind is showing off but the sky, bored with the game, summons back the rain.  Deprived of its playmate, the wind quiets down.  The late summer sun peers through to inspect the damage.  It glares at the puddles on the black metal tables and mirrors disapproval at the glistening flagstones.  I am not gone, yet, it seems to say, but its statement has lost some of its confidence.  It knows it has grown weary after the last few weeks, and the time has come to hand over the sceptre to autumn’s youthful vigour.

Autumn is the touchstone coming to test the worthiness of all that has been built over the summer.  It will tug at all the knots that have been tied, and those that are secure will pass the test.  The wind is coming to shake all the bright green sprouts, and those with strong roots anchored deep in the soil will remain unbroken.  The cold is coming to check the steadfastness of leaves on the trees.  The weightless optimists will wither and fall.  The strong evergreens will remain proudly green, their hopes intact.  The rain is coming to wash away all nonsense, so what is true will remain free of rust, untarnished, ready to glow again in the spring sunlight.

Scribe Doll

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River Voices

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Let me speak to you about rivers*.

The sea is the protagonist of plays, symphonies and operas.  The sea is a power than can break man, and man has wrestled with the sea, trying to tame it, since the dawn of times.  The sea is a force to be reckoned with.  It is a world in its own right.  I have always held the sea in deep respect – but I have never felt any love for it.  I find its roar too imposing, the smell of salt too intrusive, its sheer size disconcerting.  I do not trust the sea; it has a violent streak.  But rivers – ah, rivers – are gentle, and soothing, and inspiring.  They caress my soul when it is weary, wash away dark thoughts when I am sad, bring fresh ideas to feed my imagination, and lull me with stories whenever I ask.  They hear my innermost secrets.

Rivers come together to make the sea.

Rivers make loyal friends and confidantes.

There is the Tiber, that rushes through Rome with the confidence of one who feels equal to the splendid buildings it passes on its way.  It reflects the fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo, with stories of crimes, of torture, secrets and plots.  It plays arias from the second act of Tosca.  It brings love songs in Roman dialect, ritornelli, wisecracks from Trastevere and the common sense of Trilussa’s poems.  Like Rome, the Tiber is loud.  Like a beautiful woman with a rugged-accented, husky voice unafraid to flaunt – rather blatantly – her sex appeal.

There is the Wear, that hugs the Peninsula of central Durham.  Local people tell of that morning when German bombers were heard in the Northumbrian sky, and a blanket of thick fog rose from the river, and wrapped itself around the Cathedral and Castle, making the  Peninsula invisible.  So the bombs did not touch the heart of the city.  They call it St Cuthbert’s Miracle.  When I was at university, at Durham, I spent many an afternoon sitting on the steps of the College boathouse, writing in my notebook, the water gurgling to and fro at my feet, teasing, and listened to stories of illuminated manuscripts and theological discussions.  Or I stood on Prebends Bridge, admiring the reflection, in the river waters, of the Norman Cathedral towers, “half church of God, half castle ‘gainst the Scots.  At the end of the academic year, we would all gather on Prebends Bridge to listen to madrigals, sung from boats, my favourite being Delius’s To Be Sung on a Summer Night by the Water I.  Ethereal voices carried up by the breeze.

There is the Cam, that snakes between the Colleges of Cambridge, its surface caressed by weeping willows.  For a brief time – in a fruitless attempt to acquire teamwork skills – I joined the College boat club, and coxed a crew of eight, before dawn.  Ducks would voice loud protests at the intrusion, and swans were known to bite the oars, as I learned to pull the rudder string in time before the boat bumped into the bank.  The Cam is a gentle river, full of East Anglian magic that seems to giggle at Academia.  It is a river for punting, whilst trailing a bottle of champagne on a string, chilling it in the cool water.  In the city, it carries you under the romantic Bridge of Sighs (which I find more beautiful than its Venetian namesake), Clare College Bridge, with its stone globe missing a section, and Newton’s Mathematical Bridge, reputed to have been held together without a single nail or bolt.  There are other, more understated bridges, with stories to tell about Varsity folk.  When it leaves Cambridge, the Cam takes you into the Fens, past Grantchester, and as it flows across the flat landscape, you can hear Delius and Vaughan Williams.

Now that I live in London, I have made friends with the Thames.  Like this wonderful city, the Thames has many tricks up its sleeve.  At the foot of Westminster, it is majestic, mirroring the amber lights of the Houses of Parliament and the platinum glow of Big Ben.   As it struts beside the South Bank, it becomes trendy and theatrical, tossing at you the odd snippet of orchestral music, mixed with whatever tune the resident buskers are improvising.  When it reaches the Globe Theatre, it mutters Shakespearean insults at the tourists.  Arriving at St Paul’s, it is all pomp, circumstance and Purcell brass.  Personally, I am especially fond of the Thames when it reaches the shade of Putney Bridge.  It is where I go and converse with philosophical crows.  It is where I listen to the whispers of plane trees with branches swaying over the waters, and white trunks so wide, two people could hold hands around them.  Ducks congregate on the bank, and couples of swans glide past.  When the tide is low, herons stand, motionless, staring into the shallow waters, waiting, or stride with Royal Ballet poise.

And, all the time, the river is ready to lend an ear, and be your loyal confidante.

 

* With thanks to H.

Scribe Doll

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In Grantchester.

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Scribe Doll

My friend C. has a sticker on her vehicle, which says, “My other car is a broom”.  She keeps it by the back door, ready to sweep out dust and other unwanted dirt.  To keep the house clean from unpleasant thoughts.  Clear of prejudice, sorrow and fear.  “We cannot afford the luxury of fear,” she once told me, a quarter of a century ago.

I notice her as soon as I get off the train at Cambridge.  She stands out from the crowd.  There is a soft glow around her.  White, with a hint of lilac – echoed in the lilacs, purples and violets she so frequently wears.  Twenty-five years ago, when I first went to see her, I knocked on a lilac front door.

Today, her long, abundant hair is braided.  Its rich, chestnut brown has only just begun to fade.  Age, however, has not dulled the knowing and gently amused glint in her deep blue eyes.  Eyes that look at life’s problems with inquisitiveness, like on puzzles to be solved.  Lessons to be learned.  Her hug is gentle yet full of healing warmth.  Everything about C. is healing.  She once cured me of an ailment two years’ worth of medics could not get their heads around.  All it took, was a little sideways pressure on an area on my feet.  C.  knows the map of the foot like an expert geographer.  When I told her I was suddenly better, she said, “Oh, good,” the way she would respond to someone telling her the weather forecast promised sunshine, or that the post had been delivered early.  Then there was the time when she suggested a herb which dissolved an ugly scar.  Then, it was a flower, then an oil.  It was C. who helped me see that illness can be a teacher and thus a friend.  C. who inspired me to study the precious art of observation, of questioning, and of trusting in nature.

She drives us through vibrant green meadows so flat they could go on for ever and ever, where the horizon is at your feet.  Along the river, elm trees sway against an expressive Cambridge sky.  The moody East Anglian wind moulds lead-grey clouds into purple mountains, golden valleys, and cyan blue oceans.  We reach the village, and turn at the church.  I look up at the clock, always expecting it to show ten to three, and begin reciting lines from The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.  We go past The Green Man, apparently named after the ghost of a headless knight that is rumoured to wander across the Fens on moonless nights.  Or so I was told, when I first arrived in Cambridge, as a teenager.

We have coffee sitting on deck chairs, in a orchard.  The blades of grass tickle my ankles, and a cheeky breeze slips its cool fingers under the collar of my jacket and brushes my skin.  We air is laced with pear, moist soil, dewey grass and coffee. A wasp sits on my bare forearm and begins grooming its antennae, my skin a temporary sunbed.  Not wanting to startle it, I use my other hand to lift my coffee cup.  A perfect creature, lemon yellow with black stripes, and a waistline to envy.  A ladybird flies onto the table, and begins to promenade on the edge of C.’s saucer.  We listen to each-other’s news.  We have not seen each other for a couple of years.  In between words, we listen to the Fens, and stories as old as the land, older than the University.  From a time when you could hear the river Cam giggle, the willows sigh, and when sprites came out to play.

I ask C.’s advice on a matter important to me.  She does not give her opinion.  Instead, she helps find stones to rebuild the interrupted path between my head and my heart, so I can find my own way to my answer.  She helps me not be afraid of my decision.  I grin, relieved to have been reconnected to myself.  She smiles that otherwordly and yet very real smile , as though that is no big deal.  “Take care of yourself,” she says, later, as she drops me off at the train station.  I know behind these ordinary words, there is a gift of true friendship.  A blessing.

Scribe Doll

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Turandot – A Story of Redemption

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Scribe Doll

One of my favourite operas – if not my actual favourite – is Turandot.  Inspired by the Persian fairy tale Turan-Dokht, it was Giacomo Puccini’s swansong, left unfinished at his death and completed by Franco Alfano.

There is something profoundly different about Turandot – a kind of power that is absent from Puccini’s other works.  Something absolute and overwhelming.  Tosca grabs you by the gut, La Bohème captures your heart, but Turandot – at least for me – bewitches you, then capsizes you.

716hZ5fNWzL.Image._My mother had a 1959 recording, with Birgit Nilsson in the title role, Jussi Bjoerling as Calaf, and Renata Tebaldi as Liù  Six heavy records in a square cardboard box with the picture of a fierce-looking, scary Chinese dragon on the cover.  I do not know how this opera found its way onto our record shelf.  I do not remember anyone else in the family ever listening to it, beside myself.  I have a blurred memory of my mother sitting on the Persian rug, libretto spread open beside her, telling me, “… but Turandot says to her father, the Emperor of China, ‘I know the name of the Stranger.  His name is Love.’”

I must have been nine or ten.

On many an afternoon, I would stack the records on our Phillips record player, and hold my breath in anticipation as the sapphire landed on the edge of the glossy black disc.  No matter how many times I heard it, that solemn sweep of the opening notes and the subsequent rhythmic chords, never failed – and still never fails – to hit me right in the centre of my chest.  A Mandarin reads out an edict to the people of Peking.  Princess Turandot will marry the prince of royal blood who will solve the three riddles she sets him.  However, should he fail, then, as the moon rises in the sky, his head will fall on the executioner’s block.  And so exiled Prince Calaf, his blind father and their devoted slave girl, Liù, arrive in Peking to witness the execution of the hapless Prince of Persia, little more than a boy.

200px-Poster_Turandot

Turandot is the icy maiden, the embodiment of cruelty.  She takes pleasure in shedding blood.  Her beauty lures men to madness and death, since no one can solve her riddles.  Although the opera concludes with a marriage and love triumphant, this is not a happy ending, for it comes at a heavy cost.  To conquer Turandot, Prince Calaf loses his father’s love, and sees Liù make the ultimate sacrifice.  As Turandot declares her love for Calaf, it is very difficult to believe in her sincerity.  As my friend Sue says, “If I were Calaf, I’d have her killed straight after the wedding, before she has a chance to get me! You don’t seriously believe she can ever change, do you?”

Like my friend, I always felt the ending to be contrived.  For one thing, I always disliked Calaf.  He is so overwhelmed by Turandot’s beauty, that he becomes utterly selfish.  He cares little for the wellbeing of his blind father, and fails to see true, selfless love in Liù.  A man who will smash anything and anyone who stands in the way of his desire.

Blinded by love, Calaf strikes the baleful gong in the public square, announcing his intention to contend for the Princess’s hand.  Even the old Emperor cannot dissuade him.  Turandot appears, and sets the three riddles.  Calaf puts fear in her heart from the start, because she sees in his eyes the glow of impending triumph, the hand of destiny.  She knows that he sees her, through her.  When he solves her riddles, she falls prey to panic, recants on her vow, and begs her father not to give her to the stranger.  At this point, Calaf performs an act of generosity.  He sets Turandot a riddle of his own.  “Guess my name,” he says.  “Guess it by sunrise, and I shall die.”  And so the people of Peking are kept awake all night, whilst soldiers and guards search for the stranger’s name.  His name, Turandot’s only hope of escape.  Only Liù admits to knowing that name, but she takes the secret away with her to her death.

Yes, Turandot is cruel – but she has a backstory, which she tells us in her aria In questa reggia.  A backstory that goes back generations, to gentle Princess Lo-u-Ling, who reigned in peace and joy until her kingdom was conquered  in war.  The invader then raped and murdered Lo-u-Ling, her terrified scream echoing through the land.  It is Lo-u-Ling’s angry, humiliated soul that lives again in Turandot, and seeks revenge.  Revenge, or a settling of accounts.  Turandot/Lo-u-Ling cannot believe in love, since her memory is that of pain.  And so, she sets love riddles, hurdles, and tests, unable to emerge from a past of horror until the lesson is learnt, and order restored.  Only, this order can be restored with love, and not revenge.  It is Calaf’s destiny to put a stop to this cycle of destruction and self-destruction, and begin a cycle of rebuilding, of nurturing and of creativity.  Trapped in her pattern of distrust, Turandot is deeply afraid of change.  In a way, Calaf’s love exorcises the demons that have kept her prisoner for centuries, and sets her free.  Moreover, it is Liù that shows her what love is.  As the slave girl is tortured, the princess asks, “What gives your heart so much strength?”

“Princess, ‘tis love,” replies Liù.

“Love?” echoes Turandot in the same musical phrase, in disbelief, for she does not know what it is.  Love, in her memory, is nothing but pain and she is puzzled by what she sees in Liù.

450px-MaiNessun As a romantic love story, Turandot is as flawed as it is unsatisfying.  It does not add up.  Look at it as a story of destiny, redemption, accounts settled and order restored, though, and it suddenly makes perfect sense.  It is all in the libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.  Once you know that, you realise Puccini’s music has been telling you that all along.

Scribe Doll

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Interview About Writing

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Rupert Davies-Cooke, of the Original Writers Group, interviewed me about writing in August 2013.

Scribe Doll

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Three Women in the Kitchen

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Three women in a South-West London kitchen, on a scorching summer afternoon.  The only cool room in the house.  Only the red setting sun peers through these windows.

Three women in a South-West London kitchen.  One, in the early Spring of her life; the other two in the late Summer of theirs.  The first, a fragrant English rose; the second, a translucent shell from the China Seas; the third, a colour-changing orpiment from the Caucasus Mountains.

Three women in a South-West London kitchen, bound together by their different femininities.  Laughing, telling stories, counselling, preparing food.  A man steps into the kitchen, for a glass of water from the running tap.  An honest man, who has nothing to fear from these women, who see him as the brother with whom they share a roof.  He shies away from the blaze of this impromptu coven.  “Come and join us,” says one.  “Pull up a chair,” says another.  Yet he retreats, on tip-toe, followed by a chorus of shrill giggles.

“I’ll make Turkish coffee,” says the Caucasus woman, hazel eyes full of tricks.  “My grandmother taught me to read fortunes in the cup.”

Limpid blue eyes look up at her with youthful expectation, then she meets the stern gaze of her peer in years.  Almond-shaped, jet eyes that say, you should know better than to fill the child’s head with nonsense.  The woman from the China Seas stands by the sink, chopping vegetables on a heavy, wooden board.  Vermillion peppers, ivory potatoes, emerald spinach and glistening white onions.  She takes no part in these childish games.  She is the mistress of the house, and a wife.

 

The copper pot with the long, wooden handle is placed upon the stove.  It whispers, hisses, and finally gurgles.  The froth slowly curls up from the edges of the pot, and rushes to the middle, like sea foam to the shore.  Bubbles brown as earth rise up, boiling.  The  air is filled with the rich aroma of coffee.  “Quick! Get the cups!” the older woman tells the young one, then pours the earthy liquid into the small, porcelain cups, whilst the woman from the China Seas looks on, her steel knife a steady rhythm against the wooden board.  Her sisters, seated at the table, purse their lips and blow on their cups, to cool to coffee.

 

“A tale my grandmother used to tell,” says the woman from the Caucasus.  “Three sisters once sat in their kitchen, sewing a tablecloth.  The first said, ‘If the King would marry me, I would embroider for him the most beautiful shirt the world has ever seen.‘

‘If the King would marry me,‘ said her sister, ‘I would bake for him the finest bread the world has ever seen.’

‘If the King would marry me,‘ said the third, ‘I would give him an heir – the strongest and handsomest knight the world has ever seen.‘

Unbeknown to the three sisters, the King was riding past their window, and had stopped to listen…”

 

The English rose and the shell from the China Seas listen, as the Caucasus woman tells the story, then picks coffee grains from her lip with the tip of her tongue.  “Now turn your cup upside down on the saucer,” she says.  “Like this.”  Playful, entertaining her young companion.  “I am scared,” says the latter.  “What will you see in my cup?” she says, blue eyes clouded with hesitation.

The Caucasus woman avoids the challenging gaze of her peer.  “Only good things,” she reassures.  “Only the road that lies ahead of you, should you face the direction you’re facing today.  Turn away, and a different road lies ahead of you.”

 

They wait, as the earthy liquid spreads down the sides of the cup, leaving swirls and patterns.  The young woman is impatient.  “Is it ready, yet?”

 

The cups are turned up, again.  The woman by the sink puts down her knife, and watches, her curiosity attracted.  Cups are turned, angled and held up to the light.  Patterns emerge.  A tall tree bearing fruit, and a song bird spreading its wings.  “Freedom,” says the English rose.

“Then be it so,” replies her companion.

A man and a woman, linking arms.  A child holding the woman’s other hand.  The young woman giggles, the bloom on her cheeks deepens.  “A child may represent a fruitful venture,” warns her friend.  “Something new and wonderful.”

“Let’s see yours, now,” says the English rose, eager for the game to continue.

It has been a long time since the Caucasus woman has read her coffee cup.  A long time since she has known hope.  But she knows she cannot allow her hopelessness to taint the excitement in the bright blue eyes that are staring at her.  She angles her cup to the light from the window.

 

A figure standing at the foot of a tall, steep mountain, with sharp, jagged edges.  On the peak, the firebird.  The prize, if the figure can reach the top, and claim it.   A figure sitting at a desk, writing on a scroll.  A man next to her.  “Angle the cup,” entreats the young woman.  The man and woman stretch out their arms to receive something.  The English rose claps her hands.  “It is, isn’t it? That’s what it looks like,” she says.  The woman from the China Seas smiles.  The Caucasus woman stares.  Then she stands up, picks the cups and saucers from the table, and washes them in the sink.

 

She cannot tell her sisters what she has really seen in her cup, for she does not dare believe it.  She turns her back to them, smiles to herself, and feels her heart quicken in her breast.

 

 Scribe Doll

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Sunday at the Globe

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Focussing my thoughts is proving impossible, this weekend.  Like trying to corral cats.  They dart across the room, bounce off the walls, whizz past me before I can catch them, hover before my eyes, teasing, then spiral upwards at vertiginous speed.  They nose-dive buzzing into my ear as I am trying to sleep.  As I open the fridge door, trying to work out what to eat, they snatch any concrete cooking plan I come up with, and slalom out of the kitchen, out of my reach, at supersonic speed.  I slam the fridge door shut, all motivation to prepare food gone.

I consider going to the last service of the Legal Year at the Temple Church, this morning.  The perfection of the choral singing always quiets my brain chatter.  Today, though, I know my thoughts will be swinging off the organ loft, knocking the choristers’ music scores off the pews, and pulling faces at all the barristers.

I remember I have arranged to have coffee with my friend B. at the usual café near St Paul’s.  It’s been B.’s role in our fourteen year-old friendship gently to lure the spooked cat my brain often turns into, down from the tree it runs up, with a saucer full of perspective.  I grab my writing notepad, the large tome of The Alexandria Quartet, which I am reading at the moment, shove everything into a rucksack, and run out of the house.  My attempt to save time by avoiding the – let’s call it leisurely paced – District Line backfires.  I end up taking three different Tube lines.  I lose patience with commuters who promenade down the long, Underground corridors.  Do people have to walk hand in hand all the time, and block the way?

B. wants to try queuing for returns at the Globe, for Macbeth.  I pounce on the prospect of some distraction.  “Oh, can I come with you?” I say.  That is exactly what I need.  Some open-air Shakespeare.  I can watch the show, while my thoughts go and play with the Weird Sisters and Greymalkin.

I first tried reading Macbeth on a stormy night, when I was about twelve.  I had to check every few words in the dictionary.  I think I must have managed the first couple of pages before finally going to sleep – but the sense of mystery, magic and thrill of those powerful words has remained with me to this day.

With only half an hour to go before the show starts, chances of returns are small.  Still, the sun is shining, so we rush over Millennium Bridge, and join the queue.  We strike lucky.  Ten minutes before the show starts, two Groundling tickets.  That means standing – something I promised myself, several years ago, I would never do again.  However, the theatre atmosphere has just sprinkled a sense of fun and adventure on my head, and I’m game to stand for three hours.

I am in no way nationalistic, but I find something very special, mellifluous and bewitching in the voice of a British stage actor.  It is limpid and brilliant, like finely cut crystal.  The show starts with a blood-stirring beating of drums and a complaint of bagpipes.  Scottish music always tugs at something deep inside me.  Words, beautiful words fly across the playhouse.  Words rich in meaning and sound.  Words that caress the ear and are a feast for the mind.  Shakespeare.  Did he really write all those extraordinary plays? Or was it the School of Night? My speculations are interrupted.  There is a little boy standing in front of us.  Suddenly, he faints.  B. catches him and, supporting his fall, gently lowers him to the ground, as the First Aiders appear out of nowhere.   Within a few minutes, the little boy is smiling, his eyes squinting in the sunlight.  I remember fainting a couple of times, when I was eighteen.

During the interval, we go and sit on the steps outside the Globe.  I start munching my sandwich, when cold drops of water start falling on my neck and shoulders.  They quickly grow harder and more frequent.  Then, the skies rip open.  “Do you want to go back in?” asks B., casually, but I am already sprinting up the steps, ahead of him, to find shelter, swearing at the BBC weather forecast for not mentioning the possibility of rain.  The timing, though, is choreographed to perfection.  The rain stops exactly at the end of the show interval, and we go back in.  I am feeling a little drowsy.  Perhaps I have eaten my sandwich too quickly.  I suddenly feel tired.  The sun pounds at my eyes, and I wonder where I have put my sunglasses, then realise B. has them in his breast pocket.  I am not in the habit of getting my friends to carry my things, but I must have got distracted, and he must have picked them up to keep them safe.  Lady Macbeth comes in for her madness scene.  Suddenly, her voice grows distant, and her face dark and blurred.  In fact, the entire stage is suddenly drowning in dark splodges.  The sudden realisation that I am about to slide down to the ground brings me just enough presence of mind to make a conscious effort to keep myself upright.  No.  I am not going to faint.  I don’t want to faint.  I whisper to B. that I am popping out, somehow float out of the theatre gates, and manage to sit myself on the bench just outside.  For a moment, I am afraid I am about to slide off the seat.  No.  I don’t want to faint.  I am not going to faint.  After about ten minutes, I am once again feeling solid enough to go back in, and watch the final battle between Macbeth and Macduff.  By the time I pick up my thoughts from the Weird Sisters, they are all tired out, and follow after me willy-nilly, dragging their feet, yawning.  On the way home, I resort to the undergraduate dinner solution – a take away.  No cooking, no washing up.  Yippee.  As I eat, my eyelids feel increasingly heavy.  My thoughts have dozed off, sprawled on the floor, curled up on my table, and lying across my laptop keyboard.  I pick them up gently, one by one, and arrange them so they are more comfortable but taking care not to rouse them again.  They do not look so intimidating now.  With any luck, they will behave, tomorrow.  In the meantime, I see the moon rising behind the oak tree outside my window.  Time to sleep, she says.

 Scribe Doll

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Deciphering the Music Code

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Saturday morning.  My friend L. and I are on the ‘phone, arranging one of our brunches in Notting Hill.  Her soft Irish tone turns businesslike.  “Now do you want to come up for your lesson before or after brunch?”

I search my memory for a reference frame.  “Lesson?”

“Yes.  I promised, over a year ago, I’d teach you to read music.”

I grin from ear to ear.  A child about to be given a long-awaited treat.  “After brunch,” I say.  I suddenly remember I forgot to have dinner, last night.  I don’t want hunger dizziness to spoil this moment.  A secret is about to be revealed to me, and I need all my concentration.

 

I have adored music for as long as I can remember.  My mother says I could tell tunes apart before I could string a sentence together.  I play CDs all the time.  I don’t listen to music.  I breathe it in and let it permeate through every cell in my body, and every thought in my mind.  I need music like I need air.  I have no difficulty believing, in Lorenzo’s words as he courts Jessica (The Merchant of Venice), that –

 

“There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”

 

I scribble words because I cannot compose music.

 

Music caresses my soul, balms my wounds, stirs my emotions, feeds my resolutions and inspires my dreams.  When, about two years ago, I suddenly developed tinnitus, I thought I would lose my mind.  The thought of not being able to hear music was simply unbearable.  The fear of such a possibility was so overwhelming, it conquered my deeply-rooted distrust of the medical profession.  I went to a surgery.  “Take a paracetamol,”  I was told in a less-than-sympathetic tone.

“I said hiss – not hurt,” I snapped, containing all impulse to spit some serious venom and wondering, once again, whether I was before extraordinarily evil or profound stupidity.

 

A couple of weeks later, I resorted to some medically-unapproved complementary medicine diagnostic tools which showed that I had displaced a couple of neck vertebrae.    After a few subsequent visits to an osteopath who unceremoniously pulled, pushed, crunched and stretched me, I could hear music again without the interference of any buzzing, ringing or hissing.

 

While at University, I used to sing at balls and formal dinners, accompanied on the piano by my friend Helen.  We called ourselves Champagne Sorbet.  Unable to read music, I would memorise the tunes.  I have a sweet-sounding pearwood alto recorder, and I play (badly) everything by ear.  I watch with envy people who sit on the Tube, leafing through musical scores, the black squiggles on the staves actually translating into music in their heads.  I would happily swap one of my languages for the ability to read music.

 

L.’s studio flat is cluttered with odd pieces of inherited furniture, hand-painted china, embroidered cushions, leaning towers of books in English, French and Russian, and every imaginable ornament – be it glass, plastic, wood or fabric.  Against the wall, stands the upright piano.  The top and surrounding floor space are littered with books and scores.  Chopin, Sondheim, Porter, Bach, Beethoven, Scriabin, Kander and Ebb, Jule Styne.  She clears a space on the table, covered in an Estonian linen tablecloth with lilacs, daisies and poppies, and smoothes an A4 sheet of paper over it.  Her biro sinks through the paper into the soft fabric as she draws five parallel lines across the page.  “This is a stave,”, she says.

Soon, both sides of the paper are covered in treble clefs, bass clefs, quavers, semi-quavers, and pauses.  L. explains the mathematical nature of music.  I think of the word Harmony.  She illustrates the meaning of rhythm, and the term heartbeat comes to my mind.  She shows me the pattern of a bar, and I think Perfection.  Of Dante’s concept of the Universe, conducted to the beat of all-encompassing Love.

 

“Now, let’s practise,” says L.  We sit by the piano.  I am too much in awe of the instrument, to touch it.  Eventually, I brush the dark wood lightly with my finger.  L. has bought a beginner’s manual on piano playing especially for the occasion, and bends back the spine before sliding it into the score holder.  She brings her thumb down and a sound, like an alerted reaction, pings across the room.  “This is Middle C,” she says, matter of fact, in charge of the magnificent instrument.  She makes me sit on the stool and allocates each of the hesitant, clumsy fingers of my right hand, to an ivory key, then instructs me to play the notes printed on the score.  She counts as I push down my fingertips.  Sounds result.  Oh, joy!  My little finger rebels.  She tells me off for my lack of control.  I finish the page and she gives me encouragement.  I have to stop.  After barely five minutes, my wrist is aching.  L.  shows me muscle-strengthening hand exercises.  I watch her knuckles spring up and down, like a spider ready to pounce.  My own hand refuses to follow her example.  There seems to be a breakdown in communication between my brain and the muscles in question.  I ask her to play, instead.

 

L. pulls a score from under the stack of papers, and spreads it open.  Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor.  She touches the keys with authority, yet something about her manner with them is cajoling.  The notes drift up, filling the room in different colours, all pastel and translucent.  Ethereal and full of regret.  They float up to the ceiling, then slowly fly out of the window, rest on the swaying leaves of the tree just outside, then disappear into the distance, lost amongst the street sounds.

 

The music pleads with me, like a prayer.  I try and think of words to describe it.  But I can’t.

 

 

Scribe Doll

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Trees as Story-Hoarders

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Someday, I would like to live near a weeping willow.

“You’re mad! It’ll wreck your water pipes!” My beloved friend S., with her bucketful of sobering practicality.  “Their roots are so long, they’ll reach out from the bottom of your garden all the way to the foundations of your house and break the pipes to get to the water.”

I slowly lower my raised back.  I did not say I wanted to own a weeping willow but that I wanted to live near one.  The very concept of owning a tree is nonsensical, of course.  You cannot own something which has stood observing this world long before you were born, and which will keep on observing it long after your visit here is over.  I just want to be close enough to a weeping willow, to go and spend time with it as often as I please.  Perhaps somewhere by a river, since we both enjoy the healing, gentle flow of its waters.

There is something of the story-hoarder about trees.  There they stand, in silence, like an unnoticed piece of stage scenery, while generations of humans play out their dramas.  Watching, observing, absorbing, storing it all.  Unlike humans, they are not shapeshifting, ever-moving troubadours, sowing their tales the width and breadth of the earth.  Rather, their stillness becomes the repository of stories, since trees are the bridges that connect two worlds.  Their roots plunge deep into the darkness of the earth core, while their branches reach out into the golden whiteness of the light.  And they are willing to whisper a story or two into an ear they deem attuned enough to hear.  You must ask, though, or they will just stand there, the seal of silence over their secrets.

Someday, I would like to live near a weeping willow.  Something about her ensnares my imagination.  Her world weariness, the grace of her springy branches swaying in the wind, her gentle caress on the surface of the river, the playful slap she gives your face if your punt gets tangled up in her mane.  Cambridge weeping willows’ breathy voices tell you of bygone times when Magic – not the Varsity – ruled the Fens, and the River Cam giggled on Midsummer’s Night.  Long, long ago, before Reason silenced Knowledge.

Again, in Cambridge, I remember a copper beech that glowed, ablaze, in the evening sunlight, in the Corpus Christi College owned grounds of Leckhampton House.  She stands between the squat concrete blocks of the George Thomson Building and a sculpture by Henry Moore.  On many a summer’s night, I would lie on the lawn, on my back, and stare up at the multicoloured stars until that moment of elation when I felt the world was upside down, and I was falling into the sky.  On my way back, when I caught sight of the surreal black form of the Henry Moore, anguish would pounce on me.  Then my eyes would search for the living silhouette of the copper beech, and be reassured.  Her husky, deep voice reminded me that she stood sentinel over my safety.  And I knew that the faceless concrete building and the discordant sculpture were illusions, but that the copper beech was real.

In London, at the start of this Millennium, I befriended a cedar of Lebanon in Bishops Park.  I had just moved to Fulham, and had gone to explore the local park.  Within minutes, angry, lead-grey clouds crowded over the blue sky, and rain came pounding down on me.  I saw the cedar of Lebanon, and ran to shelter beneath his evergreen canopy.  I leaned against his trunk, and waited for the rain to stop, while listening to his rich, mellifluous voice, and gossip about the bishops of London.

I was heartbroken when, soon afterwards, they axed off the arms of the cedar of Lebanon, and carved his smooth trunk into a wood sculpture representing two bishops.  I know not, nor care, who the bishops are or were.  To me, they have not only butchered the cedar, but humiliated him.

My current home stands by a towering oak.  Now that the foliage is densely green, I feel as though I am living in a tree house.  The leaves rustle in the wind, like a thousand tiny cymbals.  They glisten and flutter in the sunlight.  Squirrels perform acrobatic turns on the branches, then run and hide in the hollow.  A blackbird raised her brood on it, and regularly chased away a coveting magpie.  A glossy ivy clings to the body and arms of the oak, in what looks like a steadfast, faithful embrace.  There is something of the sorcerer about this oak, of a wise old man, like Merlin.  I have not heard his voice, yet.  Quietly but undeniably powerful, he watches me in silence.  I do not think he has made up his mind about me, yet.  I hope that, when he eventually does, he will deem my ear to be sharp and attuned enough to whisper a few tales to me.  Perhaps, one night, when the wind is hushed, and the moon is bathing his leaves in silver.

Meanwhile, I am nurturing two twin saplings.  A few months ago, during a time of frustration and hopelessness, I buried a few lemon pips into a pot of soil.  Hopes against a bleak, bleak winter.  They sprouted.  Some, I gave away.  The two growing in pots on my work table, I decided to keep.  Green, glossy young things, straight as an arrow, that have great plans of becoming  lemon trees.  I want to help them get there.

Scribe Doll

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