The Night Lingers by Niki Valentine
Published 10 November 2011 to launch the Writing East Midlands and Lincolnshire Echo Short Story Competition.
There are lights around the mirror and a huge bunch of flowers on the chair. There is a scented candle burning on the table too. Sylvia has never seen anything like it in her life. She picks up the flowers and presses her nose against them. They smell like a forest. That’s funny because that’s what her name means; from the forest. She looked it up once, in this dictionary of names, and it made her laugh because she had barely even seen a tree before she was twenty. She doubts her mam and dad thought twice about what her name meant, anyway. They probably liked the sound of it, a pretty name for a pretty girl. Maybe that was the problem all along, that she’d never lived up to the name they’d given her. She wonders if they’ll see her tonight. Won’t they be shocked? She hopes they do see her, see how far their useless little cow has come. But she won’t think about them. Not tonight.
Sylvia reaches for her suitcase and tries to decide whether to put on her dress or make up first. Either way around it might go wrong and it can’t go wrong tonight. She mustn’t spoil everything. Harry is fussy about things like that. He’s in a foul mood anyway, what with the way rehearsal went that afternoon. The lads couldn’t get it together with the new kit. It’d been so exciting when they’d got through and Harry had rushed out to The Music Inn in town to get new drums and guitars and amps and the works. She thought he was doing the right thing or she would have said something. Now she knows it wouldn’t have mattered what the old stuff looked like on the telly.
She opens the zip on her make-up bag. She will put her face on first and be careful when she pulls the dress over her head. It will be fine. She will feel more like herself with her face on. She holds the tube of foundation and her hands shake as she squeezes it out. This dressing room really is something else. She hopes that the boys have a fancy room too. They’ll probably have to share, being a band and all, but she hopes they have beers and not flowers. Things they can appreciate and that might take the edge of the nerves and all. Not too many beers, though. And no bottles of the hard stuff. Please not that. She smoothes foundation over the cracks in her skin. She is only thirty five but looks older without the makeup. She knows how to dolly herself up, though. She can change her face and hide shadows. Hide other things too, when Harry is less careful. But she won’t think about that. Not tonight.
There are always things you’d rather not think about, that’s Sylvia’s theory. Better that you don’t think too much at all. That’s why she likes singing because when she sings she doesn’t have to think. There is just her voice, and the air in her throat, the sound of guitars and drums to hide behind. The warmth from the crowd too, when it’s going well, the sound of them joining in. The pub scene is her first love and it always will be. She isn’t bothered about competitions or the telly, not really. She is doing this for Harry. He has all these dreams about being the next big thing, so she could never have said no to him. She never can say no to Harry. She feels too old for this malarkey, though.
Her skin looks smooth now, well, smooth enough. She draws around her eyelids with thick black kohl, which makes her eyes look bigger and bluer. She takes a lipstick and turns her mouth into a bright red heart as she sucks in and spreads the colour evenly. She smacks her lips and brings her face up close to the mirror. There is a shadow above her right eyebrow. She walked into a door, that’s what happened. You say something enough times it becomes true.
Sylvia pulls her dress from the suitcase and holds it up to the light. She smiles as she watches it flutter in the draught from the crack in the door. It’s red, her favourite colour, and it matches her lipstick. The material floats and ripples like a butterfly in the wind. She has never spent as much as that on a dress for herself, she never would, but Harry insisted. She isn’t at all sure it suits her, if she’s being honest. It pulls at the hips and under the arms a little too. But it’s a thing of beauty it truly is so she can’t help but feel beautiful inside it. She stands up and pulls the zip open, then lifts the dress over her head and lets it fall onto her body. The silk slips against her skin. She zips up and admires herself, left then right, right then left, doing half twirls at the mirror. The skirt swings around her knees and makes a shushing sound. As if it knows how good she is with secrets.
Her red wine is on the dressing table where she put it when she came in. She wishes now that she’d had white. The dress is red but the wine is redder, like blood, and she knows if she spills it on the dress it’ll show. She takes a couple of cautious swigs and then puts the glass back down again. She looks at her watch. How can time be going so slowly? The waiting is making her sick. She’s tangling and untangling her fingers like she’s wringing out a towel. She sits down and checks her face in the mirror. She hasn’t put on any mascara. Her eyes will disappear in the glare of the lighting on stage. Her hands shake as she grabs for her makeup. Is there time? She opens the wand and flicks it up onto her lashes. She gets a splash on the dress and grabs a towel. She manages to clean it so it won’t be noticed. It won’t be noticed. Say it enough times out loud then it’s true like touching the light switch, on, off, on, off, she mustn’t lose count or she’ll have to start again.
The wine is sitting on the table and she wants it now. She doesn’t care what happens to the dress. She’s hidden more than a few wine stains in her day. She can deal with stains and marks. She takes the glass. Her hand is shaking but she doesn’t spill it. One glass of wine won’t stop her singing well. One glass never does. She will drink this and she won’t spill it and it will take the edge off the fear. She wants to be on stage now, not waiting here, even if the dressing room is lovely, which it is, they have done her proud. She wishes her mam could see her now. What she’d make of this! She’d love the flowers and the candle and the smell of woodland and she could tell her what Sylvia meant and they’d smile about it together. It would be like that.
There’s a knock at the door and Sylvia is startled, spilling the wine but not on the dress. ‘Come in,’ she says, rubbing at the carpet with her foot. It doesn’t make any difference to the stain but she keeps her foot over where the wine has spilled so her visitor can’t see. It’s the floor manager, Candice. Trendy Candice with her chunky heels and bright, wide smile. Candice is a lovely name. It sounds sweet; like some kind of cake or toffee. Sylvia thinks she could call a baby that, if she ever had one. A daughter. She could still have one. She will look up Candice in that book and find out what it means then save the name, like a tooth under a pillow.
‘Four minutes,’ Candice says. Her voice is musical and Sylvia wonders if she sings. Now is not the time to ask, though, because there’s just four minutes. A four minute warning like the ones they used to practice at school when you had to hide under the chair and pray that the Russians didn’t bomb us all to hell. She would never forget how frightened she’d been. They’d all been out of their wits with it. One lad in her class had wet himself once and no one even teased him after.
Four minutes until the end of the world, until she goes on stage, until the whole of England sees her there, on the telly, and maybe her mam and dad too. It’s weird to think of them, eating their tea then seeing her while they chomp on their chops but she can’t see them. She used to wonder about that when she was a kid, about the people in the box looking out and seeing you too. She thinks about that little girl. She wishes she could come through the telly box, travel in time and into the room to that girl watching this same programme years ago and tell her it’ll all be okay. That one day it’ll be her they’re all watching. She smiles as she thinks about that. They’ll all be watching her tonight.
Then Candice is back. Those minutes went fast. People used to talk about what they’d do if they heard that warning but the truth is they wouldn’t do much at all. Wouldn’t even have time to decide what to do. Sylvia turns and looks at Candice. The smile is still attached to the girl’s face but it looks worn now. It looks sewn on. Candice is a ragdoll with buttons for eyes and Sylvia has a feeling that she has come here from the other dressing room.
A thought tickles Sylvia’s brain. She might not go on. She might shake her head at Candice now and say she isn’t doing it. It amuses her to imagine Harry’s face. She stands up and walks towards the door. She couldn’t do that to him. Actually, no, she could. It’s Candice she is worried about. There is something in those button eyes that Sylvia recognises as a woman on the edge. A woman who could pick up a knife and force it between ribs, if she was pushed hard enough.
The dress shushes around Sylvia’s knees as she follows Candice. There is a makeup lady waving a brush at her face. There are producers and engineers who line the way. They pat her on the back and tell her to break a leg, which she certainly hopes she doesn’t. She did once, when she was a kid. So many pesky doors to run into, stairs to fall down. She can see the men, on the stage already. The sound of them tuning up is all wrong, even more tuneless than it’s meant to be. She closes her eyes. It won’t go well tonight. She opens her eyes again and sees Harry strumming in big, heavy movements, so that you can see why they call the guitar an axe. She can tell his mood by the notes he plays. She always can. She wants these minutes before starting to last all night and she will make it so. She is a time traveller and can make these moments stretch into the rest of her life. She knows how to dolly herself up.
The stage throws its lights down so hot it reminds her of the beach in Spain. They went to Benidorm last year. Never again, Harry said, afterwards. He hated the plane and the food and the spics, as he called them. She’d liked the accents and the feel of the sun on her skin. She’d liked the way the streets looked different from the ones in England and the pharmacies with green crosses that flashed all through the night. And there’d been a moment, in a bar somewhere, when a dark, swarthy man caught her eyes across the room and her heart stopped.
The lights are so bright that Sylvia wants to shield her eyes. She resists. She stands, looking at the mic as if she has no idea what it does. She takes it from its stand and knocks it with her finger three times. It makes the echoing sound she is expecting. She turns and sees Harry looking at her. He doesn’t smile.
Sylvia’s not psychic, she wouldn’t say that. She doesn’t believe in that kind of thing but she does have a feeling sometimes. They call them gut feelings but, for Sylvia, they start somewhere in her spinal cord and shoot through her body on her nerves. It won’t go well tonight. She takes a deep breath. She will try her best. She will open her lungs and give it her all but it will not go well tonight. And it will be her fault. It is always her fault.
