Edinburgh 1994

Episode Two

Whenever Madeleine and I are in close proximity, something happens. The story of our relationship started well before the summer of 1994 and carried on for many years afterwards, and throughout, there’s been an amazing chemistry between us. Despite many instances of bad behaviour, let downs, and broken hearts – all one hundred percent my fault, I fear – we came through the teenage storms and the terrible twenties, and when we last met, eighteen months or so ago, for what was essentially the first time since 1996, that strange chemical reaction that occurs between us was still present. Ironic, really, because as were pushing thirty, I finally realised that after all the madness, badness, and sadness, if you pardon the cliché, of the past, she really could be the one for me after all. Of course, she’s now in a relationship, and has been for a number of years, and although her feelings for me are still present in her, she doesn’t want to lose what she has with her significant other. We maintained a telephone and text message friendship for a while, saw each other for a drink occasionally, and then it faded. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her for over a year, now. But that doesn’t mean there’s been a goodbye, a final parting and burying of feelings forever. Maybe in another seven years or so, we’ll meet again, and next time things may turn out differently between us. Maybe the feelings will finally have died; maybe they’ll be stronger than ever. This story has been twisting and turning its way through our lives for over a decade, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. Right now, it’s a story without a positive resolution - without an ending - and what kind of story is that?

Madeleine was in Edinburgh with Youth Arts in Leicestershire, the large theatre group that Byact had been an uneasy part and partner of the previous year. As ever, they were based at St. Ann’s Community Centre in the Cowgate, close to the city’s police morgue, although this latter fact I never knew until I discovered the books of Ian Rankin many years later.

Madeleine was appearing in a version of "The Beggars Opera", by John Gay, which, by a not particularly surprising coincidence considering the Youth Arts was part of the educational establishment, was being directed by one Paul Farrell.

Until Lindsay Ross returned from an extended period of sick leave after the summer of 1993 when he reverted to merely being one of two, Paul Farrell was for a while the sole teacher of drama and theatre at Burleigh, and also, to his students, public enemy number one. Of course, the passage of time has mellowed opinion towards him, and the youthful certainty that he was an incompetent, charmless, and hapless person has faded. In fact, the mellowing process probably began this very summer, as Ian Jones and I entered the café area of St Ann’s Community Centre, to find him sat feeding his baby daughter. This was probably the last time I ever saw him, and it’s only the general nostalgic flavour of this story that leads me to think of him again – he has no great part to play on this stage.

I can’t remember the combination of events that lead to Madeleine and I spending the night at her digs on the night of 14th August 1994. I remember several things that happened that may have been related, or may just have been incidental. I know that some of the members of Byact, perhaps all of them, went to see "The Beggar’s Opera", and I know that some, perhaps all, of the cast of that play came to see "Blood Wedding". I’m not sure who went to see what first, and I’m not entirely convinced it matters. I also know that Ian and I visited the halls of residence that the Youth Arts group were staying in with another member of the cast, Helen Westaway, to see how their digs compared to ours (favourably) and for a general chinwag and gossip. I know that Ian left his camera behind and had to go and get it after we had left. Again, I’m not entirely convinced that it matters one way or another. What does matter is that on the Sunday evening in question, several members of both groups were in one of the Fringe Club bars, drinking all manner of vaguely exotic drinks. It was during this sojourn in Edinburgh that Jim Keane, of all people, introduced me to the liquored delights of Crème de Menthe and Blue Bols – while the former never really captured my alcoholic imagination, the latter certainly did, and for a while afterwards, Blue Curacao and lemonade was my drink of choice. Having said that, I don’t remember whether Blue Bols had any bearing upon the events of the evening – it’s quite possible I was drinking lager. Or cider. Or Malibu and Coke. I suspect that it’s a combination of all these drinks, times infinity over the last decade, that has wiped my memory of these, and many other, events.

Madeleine and I had been speaking about our relationship – we had been going out together the previous autumn, but I had unceremoniously and unforgivably dumped her for no real or good reason. Worse, I had a short time later formed a disastrous but thankfully brief liaison with a girl who was, I’m sorry to say, not a patch on Madeleine in any way whatsoever. During the months after our spilt, I hadn’t really had much contact with Madeleine at all, despite seeing her both at school and out on the town and it wasn’t until a Friday night at Loughborough’s premier nightspot, the indescribable Echoes Nightclub, the week before Byact travelled to Edinburgh, that we met and talked, and parted better friends. As I wrote in my diary that evening:

"Finally we can talk about and laugh about the old times. It’s taken a while but things seem OK now."

So there we were, talking and laughing about the old times, and probably many other things too, and drinking. Anyone else who had caught my eye romantically during this long summer was hundreds of miles away geographically, and even further emotionally – I did send Anna Crawford a postcard later in the week, but that was my solitary gesture in that direction. It seemed that in Edinburgh, far away from Loughborough and the parties, my feelings for her were at the very back of my mind, if they were there at all.

I don’t know if I kissed her in the club, but my next memory is walking through the streets of Edinburgh at night with Madeleine, arms around each other. When we got back to her digs, we went into the kitchen, for a cup of tea or something, I suppose, and I, either by accident, chance, or some hideous drunken design, managed to lean on the cooker, putting my hand on a recently used electric hob. I don’t know if it was the smell of burning flesh that alerted me to what I was doing or the sudden, agonising pain – all I know is that for a while afterwards, my hand looked like Ronald Lacey's in "Raiders Of The Lost Ark", after he picks the medallion out of the fire.

My memory falters again here – the next thing I can remember is us both crammed into her bed, a single bed that barely fitted half a person in, let alone two. It was this, rather than a torrid night of passion, that kept both of us awake for most of the night. Yeah, there was some snogging, and some fumbling under the covers, but nothing much else. If it had been me and anyone else, it wouldn’t have been that significant in the grand scheme of our lives. Oh, at the time, it would have seemed important – I always managed to blow the briefest kiss out of all proportions back in those days, then realise I’d got into a situation I couldn’t extricate myself from – but after a while I’d probably have said, "oh yeah, I got off with X, but that’s all". However, with Madeleine, as ever, it was different and more important somehow. If you hadn’t guessed already, the events of this night were just the beginning of our second attempt at a relationship, although things didn’t actually start up again until we went out for a drink one night in October. Or did they start the day that her sister Beth went to University, and I went round to their house to say goodbye? The historical facts say the former – however, my heart says the latter, even though there were many other things going on at the time. It’s appropriate that in the midst of whatever was occurring back then – whenever then was - Madeleine was a recurring presence, always there, be it on the fringes or right in the middle, and no matter how much of my history I can’t remember, or try to mentally rewrite, that was always true. In many ways, it still is.

The following morning, I can only imagine what the combination of hangover, lack of sleep, and burned hand had done to my physical and emotional well-being. In fact, I can’t remember leaving at all, although I know I did. I don’t recall what time "The Beggars Opera" began, but I’ve a feeling I left quite early in the morning leaving Madeleine to get some sleep. Doing the walk-of-shame through the streets of Edinburgh as people walked to work, to shops, or to the theatres, is something I’m glad I can’t remember. I don’t recall the distance, or the time it took, or even whether I felt happy, or angry, or confused, or something else entirely, about what had happened. I do know that I was fatigued, in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes, and hardly in the best of tempers when I finally made it back to our digs. However, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw Steven Yule doing some of his bizarre morning exercises on the large expanse of grass that stood in the centre of the four buildings that comprised the halls of residence we were staying in. He hailed me and made some opprobrious and factually inaccurate reference to my "staying out all night". Shortly afterwards, I ran into Lindsay Ross and Daron Oram, heading out into town. To say Lindsay’s greeting was less amiable than Steve’s is the definition of understatement.

"What are the hell are you about?", she hissed at me. I don’t recall ever experiencing the literary phenomenon of someone "hissing" instead of speaking before this moment. She was clearly in what was very close to being a foaming rage, and it wasn’t just about me staying out all night with a performance the following day. Somebody, I don’t know who, had been telling tales out of school, and she knew where I’d been and with whom – and it was this that had riled her so. Now I didn’t know this at the time – in fact, I didn’t know until Madeleine herself told me many years later – that after we had split up the first time around, and were rehearsing a play at school called "Dangerous Liaisons", Lindsay had found Madeleine crying during one of the rehearsals, and asked her what was wrong. I don’t know how much she knew about what had happened with Madeleine, but at the time of "Dangerous Liaisons", which was during the early months of 1994, I certainly considered myself to be part of Lindsay Ross’s inner circle – the clique of students whom she socialised with, discussed her life with, and shared a love of the dramatic arts with. Bearing this in mind, I was shocked to find out that when Madeleine, through her tears, said something to the effect that the problem was me, Lindsay said, "has he touched you up or something?"

"No – that’s the problem", replied Madeleine. She always had a cool turn of phrase, even in moments of high drama.

I don’t know what Lindsay thought of me to ask that, and nor do I know why she never mentioned my relationship with Madeleine until that morning-after meeting many months later. Clearly, she thought I was the older guy, taking advantage of an impressionable younger girl, and it wasn’t just this brief encounter in Edinburgh that had fostered this impression with her – she’d thought it since the previous Autumn and had never mentioned it until now. I don’t recall much else of the conversation, but it wasn’t pleasant, and if there was ever a moment that I fell out of Lindsay’s inner circle, never to return, it was then. From that moment on, she treated me differently, distantly, as if I’d never been "one of the gang". This was fine - I regarded her as a manipulative old bitch, interfering in my life when she had no right or reason to, and had no desire to be part of the gang anymore, anyway. At the time, I had no idea how this was to impact upon my friendship with Matt Ball, or upon many other things.

Things got worse later on. The performance that night was a disaster, easily the worst that we did in Edinburgh, for a number of reasons, but the majority of the blame rests, I fear, with me. After the apocalyptic meeting with Lindsay, I’d had a shower and a change of clothes, but crucially, I hadn’t gone to bed to catch up with my sleep. Thus, by performance time in the late afternoon, I was hungover, tired, and as is my wont in such circumstances, had generally lost the will to live, let alone act. I stumbled through my lines when I could remember them, missed cues, and was about as removed from the play as is possible. Other things went wrong, other people weren’t up to speed either, and it was a general relief that there were only a few people in the audience to see "Blood Wedding" done so badly.

Lindsay’s reading of her directors’ notes afterwards didn’t make pleasant hearing. The performance, it was clear, stank like a dead dog. In fact, she told us bluntly, she’d stopped making notes after about half an hour, such was the calamitous nature of it. She went round each of us, pointing out our faults (presumably all of which had occurred during that opening thirty minutes whilst she was still making notes) and when it came to my turn, she merely made an obliquely snide remark about my antics the previous night. When she’d finished slagging us off, she said she wasn’t sure if she wanted us to carry on with the show if each night was going to be as bad as that, and left.

Needless to say, the show did go on, and from then on things improved, and never revisited what had happened that day. In fact, it was better after the pivotal moment in the middle, than it had been before it. However, the better part of that day – or the night before, I did revisit, in the autumn that followed.

Although I didn’t see much more of her in Edinburgh, Madeleine remained on my mind. My thoughts drifted towards other people after we returned home, particularly at the summer’s final party and on a couple of occasions shortly afterwards. But the day after that last party was the day that Beth went to university, the day I went round to her house to say goodbye and good luck. I saw Madeleine then, and I bought Pulp’s "His ‘n’ Hers" album off her – we were convivial, chatty, and I think I knew then that it was only a matter of time before something happened again. We saw each other out on the town on a few occasions, and then one night in October, something did happen. I asked her to go for a drink with me, and on that night, as we walked through the deserted, locked up park in the cold night air, Madeleine and I once again became involved romantically.

Similar to the performance in of "Blood Wedding", it was better after the brief liaison in Edinburgh than it had ever been before.