When the Curtain Falls

  ‘Oh… oh that’s much better. I didn’t think you much suited wrinkles.’ Fawn pulled off his flat cap and touched his smooth cheek.

  ‘That’s rich coming from the girl who didn’t even live long enough to have ’em!’ Walter laughed.

  ‘You two have been back together for all of thirty seconds and you’re already bickering!’ Olive shouted.

  ‘The lady’s right. I think it’s high time we got out of this theatre, don’t you? I’m sick of it.’ Walter laughed, taking Fawn’s hand.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I rather like it here.’ Fawn smiled, looking around fondly, one last time.

  ‘I know. You always did.’

  ‘But it’s time.’ She nodded.

  ‘It’s time,’ Walter agreed. He looked back up to the couple on the fly floor. ‘Goodbye, you two.’

  ‘Olive?’ Fawn stepped forward to get a better look at her. ‘Could you do me a favour?’

  ‘Anything!’ Olive nodded.

  ‘I watched you. In this show. Every night. And I think you’re just… brilliant.’

  ‘Oh…’ Olive felt all the breath in her lungs escape her at once.

  ‘Go and have the career I never got to have. For me. And please know, I’ll always be your most avid fan.’ Olive couldn’t speak through the lump in her throat so she just nodded and sank into Oscar as he encircled her in his arms.

  ‘You’re not bad either, Oscar.’ Walter winked.

  ‘Thank you, Walter,’ Oscar laughed.

  ‘Thank you, Oscar. For reuniting us… and tell them I er…’ Walter gestured to his old, dead body and Oscar looked down at him lying in a pool of his own blood, revolver in hand.

  ‘I think… I think it might be quite obvious, mate,’ Oscar said.

  ‘Yeah – I suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Right, Walter, it’s time.’ Fawn came and stood with Walter and just like they’d never been apart, his arms found her waist and she placed his hat back on his head. ‘I’ve waited a long time to do this again…’ Fawn barely let him take a breath before she pushed her lips against his and pulled him in as tight as she could. When she pulled away, Walter smiled wider than he had in years. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Before we go, my lady, I think it’s time you took the bow you never got for the performance of a lifetime.’

  ‘Really?’ Fawn’s eyes burned a little brighter for a moment.

  ‘You deserve it,’ Oscar said.

  ‘Well, only if you’ll bow with me? I’ve never bowed without the rest of the cast before!’ she shouted up to the couple on the fly floor. And so Olive and Oscar climbed down the ladder and walked from the wings to join the ghosts of Fawn and Walter on centre stage.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure knowing you,’ Olive said to Walter.

  ‘The pleasure was all mine.’ He smiled back. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen!’ Walter addressed the empty seats. ‘You’ve all been waiting sixty-six years for the actress who —’

  ‘She’s here?’ called a voice that broke the deathly silence of the auditorium.

  ‘Fawn Burrows?’ Another voice shouted from the dress circle.

  ‘Erm… yes… that’s me.’ Fawn said and suddenly, the auditorium was abuzz with noise and chatter. In every seat, a ghost faded into view, men in bow ties, women in their evening gowns still clutching their handkerchiefs.

  ‘Oh… oh my goodness.’ Fawn couldn’t believe it. Nearly every member of the audience the night she had died had returned to see her curtain call. The few empty seats belonged to those who were lucky enough to still be living.

  ‘We’ve been waiting just as long as you have to see you take the bow you deserve,’ said a lady in the front row, whose hat was so large it was blocking the view of at least six people.

  ‘No one likes unfinished business,’ laughed another voice from the back of the stalls.

  ‘Well, then, in that case… ladies and gentlemen,’ said Walter, ‘it is my honour and my privilege to present to you the actress who loved her work so much she died for it, wrongfully robbed of a long and beautiful life… and the girl who stole my heart from the moment I heard her laugh. I give you: Fawn Burrows.’

  The audience burst into an applause so rapturous that both Oscar and Olive knew they would never hear anything like it again in their lifetimes. The crowd roared and cheered and Fawn looked out on an ocean of a thousand pairs of hands shimmering, a sight she never thought she’d get to see again. Fawn took Walter’s hand and stepped forward.

  ‘Take a bow too, Walter. You deserve it just as much as she does,’ Olive said and then clapped and cheered arguably louder than anyone else.

  Fawn and Walter grinned at each other at the prospect of finally having the life they’d dreamed of in a world hereafter. Then as the audience rose to their feet, the ghosts of the rising starlet of 1952 and her stage door man bowed together… and disappeared.

  Epilogue

  Twelve Years Later

  Olive Green, two-time Olivier-award-winning actress, is to star as Maggie in the Broadway revival of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. However, this won’t be Green’s Broadway debut. She took New York by storm at the age of twenty-seven when she starred as Eliza Small in When The Curtain Falls which transferred from London’s glittering West End back in 2020. Back then she was loved-up with her co-star, Oscar Bright, but where are the couple now over a decade later? We can’t wait to find out when we catch up with Olive Green when she’s back here in NYC this Autumn.

  Olive put down the magazine on the dressing table of her new dressing room. Opening night still never failed to make her stomach somersault at any given moment. The clock on her phone said she had five minutes until she would be called to the stage and there was no turning back then. The show must go on. Olive felt like she needed a moment of calm amidst her new crazy life in the US. Yellow cabs honked their horns and people yelled outside her window and she was sure she could see more city lights than stars in the darkness. But as she put her hand to the window, tracing the skyline, no star or light glinted as brightly as the diamond on her wedding finger.

  Olive went back to the dressing table and picked up the magazine once again. She must have looked at it a thousand times already but she couldn’t help it. In the corner of the article, the journalist had used an old production photo from London’s version of When The Curtain Falls. The young and chiselled face of Oscar Bright held a broody stare as he stood holding the revolver in his straightened arm with Olive draped across him in her burgundy dress. Olive automatically felt down the side of her body and wondered if she’d be able to get into that dress any more, but then she shook the thought from her mind. I look better now anyway, she thought, and smiled. Her phone buzzed and LOULOUBFF4EVA flashed on the screen and Olive scrambled to pick it up, the phone almost slipping out of her grasp.

  ‘LOU!’ she yelled.

  ‘OLIVE, you big star, you! Tell me everything.’ Lou’s voice instantly filled Olive with the urge to jump on a plane and fly back home. It was her accent more than anything that made her miss London. Olive loved the sound of American voices but nothing made her feel more out of place than their unfamiliarity. People would say words to her that she thought she understood but it often turned out that she didn’t and what it meant to them meant something very different to her. Olive’s eyes stung but she tried to keep the sadness out of her voice.

  ‘I need to be on stage in like… three minutes!’ She laughed.

  ‘Well, then you have three minutes to tell me everything! GO!’ Lou started to make tick-tock noises with her tongue.

  ‘Arghh, the pressure. Erm, the apartment they’ve put me in is lush, the theatre is pretty nice and tickets are selling well so that’s… that’s good.’

  ‘How are you? You sound stressy. No one likes you when you’re stressy.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Olive laughed, wiping the single tear that had escaped. ‘I dunno. Theatres here aren’t quite the same as at home. There’s no…’ Olive twisted a bulb wondering if she could make it fli
cker, ‘atmosphere. And I’m missing Mr Green, of course.’

  ‘Mr Green,’ Lou giggled. ‘I still think he should have taken your name. Sounds so much better!’

  ‘I know, but “Olive Green” is and always will be my stage name. A perk of being an actor!’

  ‘Is he going out there at any point?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. Just gotta wait and see how things pan out.’

  ‘Bloody actors,’ Lou muttered with sincerity which made Olive cackle until her eye caught the picture in the article again.

  ‘They’ve used this picture from When The Curtain Falls in this magazine and I just can’t stop looking at it, Lou. It’s the one from the London version and it’s just… weird. So much has changed since then.’

  ‘Blimey, that is a blast from the past. Almost a decade ago now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Over a decade! We look so young.’ Olive touched Oscar’s face in the photo.

  ‘You were so young! You’ve had a lot of ups and downs since that photo was taken but look! You’re in NYC, playing another corking role to add to your never-ending list, and you and your fella will be back together again in no time.’

  Ladies and gentlemen, this is your act one beginners call. This is your act one beginners call. Thank you.

  ‘Listen, Lou, I gotta go – but I’ll call you when I’m back at the flat after the show because I need to know all about you and home! God, I miss home,’ Olive said, another tear or two escaping.

  ‘Oh shush, home is boring. You’re in the US of A! Blink and you’ll miss it! Stop thinking about him. I know you’ve never really been separated for this long but he’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it! SO MUCH LOVE!’ Lou yelled down the phone.

  ‘Love, love, love!’ Olive said back but Lou had hung up before she pulled the phone away from her ear.

  Olive ripped the article out of the magazine and pinned it to the corkboard at the side of her mirror. She slipped off her wedding ring, kissed it and put it alongside her necklace into a little pink ceramic jewellery dish she’d been given as an opening night present. With one more quick look in the mirror at her clean white dress, she turned her mirror lights off and then slid on her costume shoes ready for the opening scene. Olive took a slow and steady breath before opening her dressing room door and heading down to the stage for yet another opening night. As soon as the door closed, the light Olive had previously twisted turned itself back on.

  ‘Could I get an extra Playbill, please?’

  ‘Oooh, is that a British accent I hear?’ said the usher, handing over the Playbill. Oscar Bright laughed.

  ‘It is, yes.’ Oscar politely nodded his head but pulled his flat cap a little further over his eyes and quickly ducked away into the crowd that was filing into the auditorium, their chatter loud and their drinks sloshing to and fro. The nerves were starting to get to him. Ever since experiencing an opening night from the other side of the curtain, regardless of which side he sat now, everything inside him seemed to bubble. Although, ever since his West End debut, Oscar had stayed firmly off the stage and in front of the camera instead. A world in which he could redo takes until they captured the perfect one was much more suited to Oscar. These days, however, his role on British soap opera Love Lane was far less talked about than his work on set playing the sidekick in Indiana Jane, the new sequel to Indiana Jones, in which Indiana’s daughter, Jane, takes over her father’s daring archaeological adventures. Oscar played a sweet librarian who was not only extraordinarily helpful when it came to his extensive knowledge of history but also had a thirst for adventure himself, even if Jane was constantly digging him out of trouble. The first movie had been released earlier in the year and Oscar found himself on a small break before shooting for the second would begin.

  He checked his ticket three times. ‘M fourteen. M fourteen. Ah, here we are,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Sorry, could I…?’ Oscar did his best to awkwardly slide past everyone already seated who did very little to help him until he plonked himself down in seat fourteen next to a a smartly dressed elderly gentleman who, Oscar noticed, seemed to be alone.

  ‘Do you come to the theatre much?’ asked the man, taking off his glasses and giving them a clean with a cloth he produced from his top pocket.

  ‘Quite a bit, yes.’ Oscar smiled, removed his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You?’

  ‘As much as I can. Nothing quite like it, is there?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Oscar smiled, but it was then he heard a small gasp and his heart jumped. Instantly, his eyes scanned the audience around him until he locked eyes with two girls of, he guessed, around eighteen, sat four rows in front of him but firmly wedged in the centre of the stalls. He politely smiled; immediately the girls started scrambling through their bags and suddenly the occupants of the stalls had a mission put to them. Two tickets and a pen were passed from person to person, from row to row until the man in front of him, puzzled, looked up at the girls who were now standing and frantically waving, impossible to miss. They enthusiastically gave the man the thumbs-up so he handed the tickets and the pen to Oscar whose cheeks were now glowing so red he was sure the cast would still be able to see him from the stage when the lights went down. Oscar returned the thumbs-up to the girls and proceeded to sign the tickets.

  ‘Are they friends of yours?’ asked the elderly gentleman, chuckling at the swooning pair, one of whom had started to cry.

  ‘Something like that.’ Oscar smiled, not wanting to be rude but also not too keen on explaining. Oscar passed the tickets back to the man in front who had been waiting but much to the girls’ dismay, instead of passing on the freshly autographed tickets he said, ‘You don’t know who this is, do you?’ to the elderly man who was placing his glasses back on his nose.

  The elderly man took a good look at Oscar but there was no recognition there at all. Just an apologetic smile. ‘I’m sorry – I… I don’t!’

  ‘No, please don’t be sorry! I’m no one worth mentioning.’ Oscar smiled, fiddling with his flat cap in his lap, hoping the lights would go down soon.

  ‘Don’t be modest! This is the guy who’s making a laughing stock out of the Indiana Jones franchise,’ the man in front scoffed and quickly turned back to the stage, passing the tickets and the pen along to the person in front of him. Oscar waved at the flustered girls when they received them and finally, they sat down. The elderly gentleman could sense Oscar’s embarrassment and gave him a smile and a roll of his eyes at the man in front whom Oscar thought was no doubt feeling very smug. Just as the lights were going down, Oscar couldn’t help himself. He leant forward and whispered in the man’s ear, ‘Harrison Ford didn’t seem to mind the new movie too much when I had dinner with him last week but hey, what does he know, eh, buddy?’ Oscar patted his shoulder and sat back in his chair.

  ‘Beautifully done,’ said the old man.

  The show was an undeniable success. Well directed, with a tight and well rehearsed cast and impeccable acting but from no one more so than Olive Green. When she appeared to take the final bow, the members of the audience who weren’t already on their feet jumped up like they were spring-loaded. Oscar put his fingers between his lips and whistled as loud as he could and there was a twinkle in Olive’s eyes as she glanced towards M fourteen.

  ‘Why are you even here?’ snapped the man in front, flinching from Oscar’s whistle. ‘Isn’t theatre a little too intellectual for someone like you?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ Oscar said over the roar. ‘But you see that woman there? The one who this entire theatre is applauding?’ Oscar made sure to lean over the man’s shoulder and point Olive out, even though she was standing centre stage, taking the hands of her cast mates and bowing again.

  ‘Oh, I see her,’ said the man, still applauding. ‘I plan on taking her home this evening.’

  ‘Oh, do you!’ Oscar laughed.

  ‘She and I have yet to be introduced but y’see, I’m the producer’s son.’ The man turned his head and flashed his teeth an
d Oscar felt a wonderful rush of triumph flood through his chest.

  ‘Ah, well you see…’ Oscar grinned from ear to ear and leant forward so the man had no chance of mishearing him, ‘I’m her husband.’ Even in the dim light, Oscar could see the man’s face fall and he instantly stopped clapping. He collected his coat and quickly moved past the people in the row just as the cast disappeared and the lights went up so no one could see his drained face.

  ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear.’ The old man took hold of Oscar’s arm, less to stop him leaving than because his aged legs had lost balance, but Oscar gladly held him steady. ‘Olive Green. She’s your wife? She’s unbelievable.’

  Oscar smiled. ‘Yes, she is.’