Midsummer Magic
For Dot with love and gratitude
‘You want to know how it’s done? I can’t tell you that. Shh, or you’ll spoil the magic.’
Freddie Puck
: The Art of Illusion
Table of Contents
Part One: There May I Marry Thee
Part Two: Ill Met by Moonlight
Part Three: The Course of True Love
‘Thou speakest aright:
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II, Scene 1
‘“Lord what fools these mortals be …”
You could say that’s my mantra. It’s easy to hypnotise the gullible, but I’ve managed to hypnotise sceptics too. I like to think Shakespeare knew a thing or two about hypnotism.’
Freddie Puck interviewed in The
Sun
, June 1982
‘You’re late,’ Freddie Puck was standing languidly by the stage door, as Tatiana came flying down the street straight from dinner with her agent, Susan Peasebottom, where she’d both eaten and drunk more then she should have. He was smoking a cigarette, and as usual, looked calm and in control. She hated the way he always did that; she always felt ill at ease around Freddie, as if he knew a secret about her that she did not. But then that was part of what he did, play mind games on people to screw them up.
‘You’re lucky I’m here at all,’ she muttered. After the offer Susan had put to her this evening, she had been very tempted not to turn up.
Freddie looked her up and down quizzically – honestly, sometimes she felt like she was just a lump of meat to him.
‘You done something to your hair?’
Tatiana blushed. She wasn’t sure about her new haircut, a drastic departure from the Farrah look she’d been sporting for the last couple of years. Her hairdresser, Julie, had produced an article from an American mag which pronounced that long flickbacks were out, short was in, and hair for some reason should be red. So Tatiana had been persuaded to have it dyed, trimmed and hacked, so now she had a longish piece at the back, but the hair at the top was cut short and swept back in waves – or it had done when she’d come out of the salon this afternoon. After a couple of hours in a smoky dive with Susan Peasebottom, followed by an undignified race up the road, Tatiana felt sure her hair wasn’t quite the crowning glory the article had promised.
‘Yes,’ she mumbled, almost wishing he hadn’t noticed.
‘Nice,’ said Freddie, nonchalantly flicking out his ash as she walked past him into the theatre, and as usual she had no way of knowing whether he really meant it, or whether he was just kidding her.
‘Tati, darling, love the hair!’ Damn. Bron came out of his dressing room (it still irked her that he had his own dressing room, while she had to share) and gave her a hug. ‘How was dinner?’
‘Great,’ said Tati, hoping he hadn’t noticed the slight flinch as he touched her. It was still the same between them. It was. She kept telling herself that. She had to believe it.
‘Any news?’ he said lightly. She’d let slip there might be something, now she wished she hadn’t. She wanted time to work out what she was going to do.
‘There might be a part in a soap coming up,’ she said.
‘A soap?’ Bron’s face was almost comic in his dismay. ‘You can’t do a soap, darling, Tati, you can’t. It’s selling out.’
The frustration spilled out of her.
‘And this? This isn’t selling out?’ she said. ‘Freddie bloody Puck’s promises won’t pay the rent.’
‘He’s in talks with a TV production company,’ said Bron, ‘it’s only a matter of time …’
Tati put her hands up, ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she said. ‘Freddie’s always in sodding talks with a TV company. This is
real
, Bron. I want you to be happy for me.’
Bron slumped, and gave her the sad look she’d seen too much of late. ‘But what about us?’ he said. ‘What about our plans?’
‘I know, we’ll have our own theatre company,’ she said. She’d heard it too many times before. ‘Perhaps I had plans too, but we all know what happened to
them
.’
She couldn’t disguise the bitterness in her voice.
‘Tati,’ said Bron, there were tears in his eyes, ‘You know I’m sorry –’
‘Don’t.’ Tati looked at him sadly. ‘It’s too late for all that. I have to think about the future now.’
‘We both do,’ said Bron, reaching out and holding her hands. ‘Come on, Tati, we’re still young, I still want to do Shakespeare with you. One day …’
‘Maybe I can’t wait for one day anymore.’
She’d said it. Words that she’d never wanted to say, and when she saw how Bron slumped even more, she wished them back. ‘Look,’ she said, letting go of his hands gently, ‘I’m late, we’ve got a show to do. We’ll talk about this later.’
Giving him a swift kiss and a hug, she left him in the corridor and went to get ready, her thoughts churning. Susan’s offer was tempting, but was it the right thing to do?
As usual, it was squashed in the girls’ dressing room. Bron didn’t have this problem in his single dressing room, thought Tatiana bitterly as she found her dressing table in the corner. Naturally the
male
star of the show couldn’t slum it like she did. She was so mixed up. She loved Bron, she really did, but she hated this, and it wasn’t fair. Someone had laughingly written ‘Star’ in lipstick on her mirror. Ha, bloody ha. The joke was certainly on her, she thought sourly as she sat herself down, and with the practice of an old hand started to apply her stage make-up.
The room was hot and crowded, and full of the noise of women’s chatter. Like so many cheeping hens, Tatiana thought bitchily. She was more of a man’s woman. Women and their idle talk bored her. Which didn’t make for popularity among her peer group, but Tatiana didn’t really care. This batch of hens was even duller than most, so she didn’t feel she was missing out. They were the backstage chorus dancing to Freddie Puck’s tune, as all of them were on this
Illusion
s tour. As she was. As Bron was.
She sighed and looked at herself in the mirror. Pushing twenty-five and was this all there was to offer? She thought again about the deal on the table, and felt her stomach churn. It was all very well for Bron to tell her to be patient, that Freddie’s incessant talks with production companies about a TV series of
Illusions
would eventually come to fruition, but she couldn’t see it herself.
Tatiana scrutinised her face. Still pretty, she judged – pretty enough to do what she had to do in Bron’s show, at any rate. But for how long? This was a cruel business for a woman. Twenty-five wasn’t far from thirty. Then what would happen to her? When she and Bron had started out, he’d promised her an equal part in the act; equal shares in the profits, and then, when they could afford it, their own theatre company, Shakespeare,
proper
acting. So how come it was still her looking decorative and pretty, Bron taking all the credit, the gasps and plaudits from the crowd, as he performed yet another incredible trick? If she hadn’t been so damned in thrall to Bron …
They’d met as extras in rep, doing Shakespeare in dreary towns to uninterested punters. It had been a far cry from her drama school ambition to play Juliet at Stratford, and the only bright spot had been Bron, with his lean handsome look and sardonic manner. They had laughed their way through most of the misery of the tour, and he’d taught her card tricks and outlined his twin obsessions of magic and owning his own theatre company. When, after the tour was over, he rang her to say he and his friend Freddie had got a gig doing a magic show in Brighton, it had seemed like a lifeline. Regular money, regular work. After months of scrabbling to pay the rent, it was an easy option. It had always been meant to be temporary – Bron was never going to give up on his theatre plans, but as time went on, they seemed to recede into the distance. And now Tati often found herself wondering if he still wanted it as much as he said he did.
Tatiana formed a cupid’s bow, and painted her lips bright red in a fury. With her green and blue sparkly eye shadow, over-blushed cheeks, and the new haircut (which despite her best efforts didn’t look anything like the photo Julie had shown her), she looked like a painted doll. Which is all she was. Being pretty and decorative was all she was good for. Unless …
Unless she took the offer. She hadn’t been quite straight with Bron. It wasn’t just any old soap: she’d been offered the leading role in a new soap opera the Beeb had just commissioned. Susan thought she should; couldn’t understand her hesitation. ‘You don’t want to be doing this forever do you?’ she’d said with uncharacteristic honesty. Tatiana knew she was right. So why was she still hesitating? Misguided loyalty to Bron was what Susan had called it. But, Bron and her … a future without him was unthinkable, even after what had happened. She pulled on her spandex bodysuit, wincing as she realised how tight it was getting. She still hadn’t managed to shed all her excess weight. Even Bron had noticed and Freddie had made sarky comments too. All the time she was getting older and fatter and there were any amount of silly hens in this hen coop desperate to take her place.
So why don’t you let them
?
As Tatiana stood waiting in the wings for the fanfare which heralded her arrival on stage, the thought came to her more strongly than ever. As she let Bron tie her up, throw knives at her, try to cut her in two, and pull hankies out of her ear, while she span and danced like a pretty doll around him, with the same fixed grin on her face, she felt her strongest urge yet to leave. What was there for her here now? She and Bron were growing apart, she could feel it. She knew Bron was hurting too, but what had happened was forming an insurmountable barrier between them. And Freddie was too much of an influence not to suggest she was replaced when she got too fat, too wrinkly, too old.
At the climax of Bron’s act, he produced doves out of a hat, which flew onto Tatiana. As she paraded round the stage (hating what she did with a passion) the bird that had landed on her head shat on her.
In that instant her decision was made. Susan was right. She could do much better than this.