My Own Worst Enemy, page 20
I toss the rapier between my hands, enjoying its familiar weight.
‘How about a little wager?’ I say.
Mae’s eyes follow the flying blade. ‘What kind of wager?’
‘The loser of this fight has to give up.’
‘Give up what?’
I run my finger along the blade. ‘We said it before, Jones. Showbusiness isn’t big enough for the both of us. You played dirty, so I have no choice but to play dirty with you.’
I pick up two prop daggers from the box, tucking one into my sock.
‘Give up your part in this show and they’ll give me Viola.’ I hold the other dagger out to Mae. ‘Do that, and I won’t have to tell everyone about your little CV of lies – or about your mother.’
She growls and snatches the dagger from me.
‘Never!’
I point my rapier at her and shout, ‘En garde!’
We start to circle around each other, Mae’s rapier taut and wobbling, mine languishing casually in my palm.
‘I’m the lead,’ she says, as if to herself, ‘because I’m better than you. You only got cast because of me.’
‘You only got cast because of me,’ I snarl.
‘You got me into the room, but in the room I beat you!’
‘If I wasn’t good enough, they wouldn’t have cast me at all,’ I say. ‘They could have twins who look dissimilar, like literally every other production of Twelfth Night.’
‘I never said you’re not a good actor!’ says Mae.
I hesitate. Her backhanded compliment catches me off guard. Then Mae drops her rapier, jumps forwards at me, and her backhanded slap catches me on the cheek.
Distantly, I hear the cast gasp.
I clutch my face. Trust Mae to use a slap in a swordfight.
She crouches lightly on her feet, like a feral cat, and grins. ‘But you know what, Clooney? You’re a better actor when you’re opposite me.’
I narrow my eyes and throw my rapier aside. I crouch and hold my clenched fists in front of me, mirroring Mae.
Mae’s smile broadens. ‘See?’
My blood crackles. I dart towards her. She feints. I spin and we circle each other, faster now.
‘You don’t want to admit it,’ she laughs, ‘but I know you have never acted like you have when you’re around me. You stood out in this audition because I baited you on the workshop floor. I get you out of your clever little head. Any success you’ve had since we met is because… of… me.’
She lunges forwards, and we click into a full-on wrestle. I push back with all my might, but we’re evenly matched. We stare at each other in the headlock. Mae screams in frustration. Staring into her furious eyes, thinking about everything she’s taken from me, I scream back. We shout louder and louder until finally, with a supreme effort of will, I push her backwards and she falls onto her backside.
I stride towards her, picking up both the abandoned rapiers. I swirl them in the air between us. Mae shuffles desperately away, patting herself, trying to find her dagger amongst all her padding. Her back reaches the set behind her.
The set is a leftover from the previous show, in the last stages of being dismantled. It’s a painting of the lava pits of Hell. Mae’s pressed against its ruins as I step over her legs, straddle her, and point the rapier at her chest.
She pants underneath me.
‘As the chip on your shoulder keeps reminding me, I have trained to do this,’ I say, stroking a rapier along the side of her neck. ‘I attended the best fucking drama school in the country, and I worked to get the best fucking marks in every fucking exam. And that’s how I can do this.’
I throw the rapier into the air. I don’t need to watch it spin. I catch it by its handle and, in the same fluid motion, push it into the scenery wall above her head. It quivers.
‘You’re the one who’s copying me,’ I spit. ‘Any success that you have, is because of me. Don’t you dare forget it.’
And right now, I almost believe myself. I move to the front of the stage to take a bow.
But it’s not over yet. Mae, panting, calls behind me. I turn and watch her reach for the handle above her.
‘Oh yeah? Well then, I’ll just copy—’
She pulls it out and throws it into the air. For a second, we all watch in wonder as it travels upwards. But then, like a corgi trying to jump onto a sofa, it barely gets an inch high. It drops with an embarrassed ‘flump’.
We look at it, then up at each other.
I give her a slow clap.
‘Wow. Mummy must be so proud.’
Mae stares at me. Then she gives a sudden deranged scream and lunges for my foot.
Still laughing, I hop backwards, continuing to clap, like a renegade Morris Dancer.
‘You’d be nothing without me!’
‘You’d be nothing without me.’
She’s managed to find her dagger, but it’s facing the wrong way. As she fumbles with it, she looks up, and her face is suddenly so horrified and awed, I wonder if she’s finally conceding to my mastery. Maybe if she believes it, I can believe it too.
Then I realise quite how far backwards I’d been hopping. My non-hopping foot comes down into blank air behind me.
I flail my arms out to try to right myself back from the edge of the stage. Mae reaches out wildly for my hand.
Unfortunately, some stage fight part of me still thinks she’s trying to attack me. So I don’t take it. I try, stubbornly, to hold on alone. And for a second, I really think I’ve done it.
‘I win!’ I cheer.
Then I trip on a footlight and fall backwards off the stage.
31
Picture the beginning of a medical drama. Life support machines beep as too many doctors and nurses wheel an urgent trolley through hospital doors; a patient in a white sheet, gas mask and tubes.
That’s all going on behind us. Mae and I sit mutely in the boring A&E waiting room.
‘Does it hurt?’ she asks, for the fiftieth time.
Annoyingly, it doesn’t, but I grimace and shrug like a very brave martyr.
‘You sure I can’t get you anything?’
I shake my head.
Mae fidgets, looking more pained than I am. She goes up to the receptionist’s desk to ask again what number in the queue I am. I don’t know if she’s desperate to be rid of me or feeling guilty.
At first, my fall off the stage was so surprising and embarrassing, I thought the cast must be right that I wasn’t in pain because I was in shock. But Mae insisted on calling a taxi to A&E and came with me, urging the driver to break the speed limit.
But now we’ve been here for an hour. Around us, a muddy woman in rugby shorts clutches scraps of tissue to her torrentially bleeding nose. A hunched gentleman hacks into his hands. The guy next to me is holding his ear as if it’s fallen off.
At most, all I have is a broken toe. Probably only a little one. I feel inadequate.
Mae returns and I glance at her.
I mutter, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t even break a leg.’
Mae looks stricken. But then we hold each other’s eye. Both of us realise in the same moment how utterly ridiculous this is.
Something shifts between us.
We start laughing. Haltingly at first, and then irrepressibly. We slap our knees, each other’s knees, howling, weeping, snorting. We laugh, and we don’t stop, even as the others in the waiting room look at us as though we’re contagious.
My stomach hurts so much I clutch at my aching belly and cling to Mae’s elbow, begging for her to stop.
The receptionist comes over and asks Mae if I need sedating. Mae replies sincerely that it won’t be necessary, which sets us off again.
Eventually, we do calm down. Mae wipes tears from her eyes, sighing contentedly.
But now, when we look at each other, there’s a new tickle of uncertainty.
‘Jones,’ I say. ‘I… I have a new proposal.’
She raises an eyebrow.
‘For the duration of Twelfth Night, should we have a ceasefire? A truce. For the sake of our other limbs.’
Mae looks at me, and, for maybe the first time since we started our rivalry, she smiles at me with her full, natural, dazzling smile.
‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ she laughs, and holds out her hand for me to shake.
I grasp it, feeling lightheaded. My hand tingles at the connection. I must still be in shock. Yes.
Mae’s still sparkling at me.
‘You’re very good at stage fighting,’ she says.
‘And you are absolutely not,’ I reply.
Mae snorts like a pig. ‘I can’t believe I thought I could just wing it.’
What had seemed so galling to me only a few hours ago now seems very funny.
‘En garde,’ she teases, pretending to be me with an imaginary rapier.
I join in, pretending to be her dropping her dagger in shock, patting my pockets.
In the course of our play fighting, our hands come together.
‘Genuinely, are you OK?’ she asks, squeezing my fingers.
‘Yeah, honestly, it’s embarrassing how much it doesn’t hurt. I reckon all I’ll need is some Calpol and to Sellotape my toes together for a few days.’
We smile at each other. Then we seem to realise in the same moment that our hands are interlinked. I pull away and she runs her hand through her messy hair instead.
‘Do you want me to ring anyone for you?’ she asks. ‘Like a… a girlfriend?’
I flush. I texted Ruth, Raphy, and my dad from the taxi, but I completely forgot about Alice. I’m a terrible person.
‘I-I don’t think I should really expect someone I’ve been on three dates with to wait with me in A&E.’
We both look at the seat in front of us.
‘Well, you can if you really like each other,’ she says.
‘I-I don’t know… She seems to like me, but…’
Mae glances at me, running her hand through her hair again.
‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I sound like a dick. I just…’ I take a deep breath. I don’t know why, but it feels very easy to talk to Mae. ‘Honestly, I’m not very experienced when it comes to dating, and I’m finding the whole thing very confusing. It’s as though I’m not feeling what I’m meant to feel. But I don’t know if that’s normal.’
‘Oof,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. I was in something like that for a while. She wanted me to be someone I wasn’t, and it’s hard not to play along. It makes you doubt yourself. I felt so much better when it ended, like I could finally hear myself think again.’
She catches herself.
‘Not that I’m telling you to stop seeing her,’ she says quickly. ‘Date as many people as you want, obviously, it’s… that’s… not my business.’
‘Well, unlike you, I don’t have many offers.’
‘What do you mean, unlike me?’ she asks.
‘Oh, come on.’ I nudge her playfully. ‘Literally everyone you meet adores you. Even the receptionist was flirting with you!’
‘What are you talking about?’ she laughs.
‘Everyone in the cast fancies you. Maybe you’re just so used to it you can’t see it.’
‘Or maybe you’re the one imagining it,’ she says.
I roll my eyes.
‘Why on Earth would I…?’
Mae grins. ‘Duh, maybe you’re just jealous.’
We both blush suddenly and furiously.
‘As in,’ she says quickly, ‘you know, obviously I meant you’re jealous of them flirting with me instead of them flirting with you – I don’t mean…’
I’m about to feign a searing agony in my toe, but at this moment there’s shouting from the A&E entrance.
‘I must be allowed to see her! She’s my only daughter!’
Dad appears at reception, wearing his Pete’s’zas uniform. Absolutely no one is stopping him.
‘Where is my Patatina?’ He bangs the desk. ‘I demand to see her!’
‘Dad,’ I say, at normal room volume, a metre behind him, ‘I’m right here…’
He wheels around.
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I thought you’d be in one of those stringy brace things.’
His disappointment that I’m not in a coma shifts to a glint in his eye when he sees Mae, who has stood up to greet him.
‘Oh ho!’ he says. ‘Is this—’
‘Er,’ I interrupt hurriedly, in case he thinks she’s Alice, ‘this is Mae Jones. She’s one of the other actors in the play I’m in.’
Dad bows to her and puts his hand on his heart. ‘Buongiorno, Mae Jones. Thank you for looking after my daughter.’
‘Oh it’s – it’s my pleasure,’ blushes Mae. ‘Excuse me, but are you responsible for Emmy’s pizza lunches? I tried some the other day and it was so good that, honestly, it made me cry.’
Dad pinches his fingers into a flamboyant chef’s kiss.
‘Ah! For that, you can get your next one free,’ says Dad. ‘You have excellent taste in friends, Emmeline.’
Dad texts Pete – who stayed behind to watch the pizzeria – to tell him I’m OK, and then talks animatedly to Mae about the merits of thinner and thicker bases.
Ruth and Raphy arrive hot on his heels. Bless them, they’re so worried about me that they’re holding hands. Ruth sees me and they drop them as they run. Raphy’s limping.
‘Em!’ Raphy coos. ‘I was so worried about you! I felt it, the moment the accident happened, like a phantom limb! I fell too! But then I knew you’d be OK because I could feel this incredible libidic energy radiating from you, like—’
Raphy sees Mae.
‘Aha! Yes, that’d be it.’ He bats his eyelashes at her. ‘Gracious me, your aura is gorgeous.’
Ruth slaps him and hisses under her breath. She is giving Mae her best bitch glare. It’s so effective, Mae steps back.
‘Oh,’ I say quickly, ‘Ruth, you don’t need to…’ I cough. ‘Umm, Ruth, Raphy, this is Mae, umm, who I might have, umm, mentioned briefly in passing about her being my, umm, colleague – but we’ve recently agreed a new, er, arrangement. We’re not, umm, enemies anymore.’
Ruth switches her bitch glare off.
‘In that case, hi,’ she says, holding her hand out. Raphy gives Mae a huge hug, lifting her off her feet.
He pulls back and gestures between her and me.
‘You radiate complementary colours,’ he says. ‘As I’m sure you know.’
Mae blinks rapidly.
‘Gosh! Right! Thank you very much!’
I remember in that moment how different my family and friends must be to hers. Mae has a literal celebrity for a mother, for heaven’s sake. She has thousands of cool friends. Of course I think Ruth and Raphy are very cool, in their own way, and Dad is, well, Dad. But still.
‘Sorry about them,’ I murmur to Mae. ‘I know they might seem eccentric, but they’re, you know. They’re my eccentrics.’
Quietly, Mae says, ‘They seem like the absolute best.’
I watch her, watching them, and realise she’s… Jealous? My chest aches.
‘Well,’ she says quickly. ‘You’ve got your real friends here now, so I-I guess I should head off.’
I’m surprised to find I’m disappointed. I wish I could invite her to stay. But of course, just because we’ve agreed we’re not enemies anymore, doesn’t mean I can think of her as my friend.
‘Of course,’ I say awkwardly. ‘Thank you for, you know… Being here.’
‘Well, it was kind of my fault,’ she laughs.
‘I really think it takes two to tango.’
She smiles dazzlingly at me again, then waves at the others. ‘Lovely to meet you all. I hope maybe one day we’ll… Well, yeah, ciao!’
To me she says, ‘Message me when you… Well, I’ll see you at rehearsals. Let me know if I can help with…’ She waves to my feet. ‘Carrying your books or something. I won’t steal them this time.’
‘Thanks, Jones,’ I say. ‘Er, I mean, umm… Thank you, Mae.’
Looking rather pink, she gives me a sort of pat on my shoulder, then another flappy wave to the others, and heads out.
There’s a pause while everyone watches her go. Then they look at each other with such outrageously raised eyebrows that I want to slap them all.
‘Guys! Stop it! We’re just friends! Barely even that!’
‘Well, I knew she couldn’t be your girlfriend,’ says Dad.
I blush and look away.
‘I know, it would be way too weird,’ I say.
‘Weird? In whatever way would it be weird?’ says Dad.
I blink at them.
‘Because of the… You know.’ I gesture between my face and Mae’s retreated back. ‘Because we look the same! That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? We’d be put on that Siblings or Dating website for people to vote on and judge us.’
The three of them frown at each other.
‘Em…’ says Ruth. ‘No one else was thinking that.’
‘I can assure you,’ says Dad. ‘You and Mae are not in any way related. No cousin of Clooney has ever mated abroad.’
I groan and wave my hands wildly.
‘That’s exactly what I mean! I couldn’t stand this… This… People thinking we’re self-obsessed little narcissists, in love with ourselves!’
‘In love?’ says Dad, wiggling his eyebrows.
‘You know what I meant!’
‘Yes, we know exactly what you meant,’ says Raphy cheerily.
‘Stop it, all of you! I… I… Opposites attract!’
Ruth and Raphy glance at each other, and then away, but I guess they must decide not to continue the battle with me.
‘Besides,’ I snap. ‘You’re the one who started this, Dad. You’re the one who said Mae could never be my girlfriend.’
‘I simply meant she couldn’t be Alice,’ he says innocently. ‘She wasn’t cutting enough to be a theatre critic.’
‘Oh.’
I shake my head and look out towards the exit.
‘Right.’
Dad coughs politely into the silence.
‘Pizza?’
32
I hobble into the rehearsal room the next day with a barely necessary crutch, feeling like Hugh Laurie in House. I confess I’m playing up to the injury (after four hours of waiting in A&E, the nurse just gave me half a roll of fabric tape) because I don’t want Francis to fire me.
