Christmas with the Ops Room Girls by Vicki Beeby

Author:Vicki Beeby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

May’s opportunity to speak to Mrs Grey came the next day. It was the day of the first rehearsal up at High Chalk House. Although Jess had distributed scripts when they’d started rehearsals with the children, she had decided to delay the adults’ rehearsals to give them time to learn their words. Now that they were only a month away from Christmas, it was time to begin in earnest.

‘We won’t practise every scene at each rehearsal,’ she told the gathered WAAFs once they had collected, together with Milan and Jiří, in the ballroom. The ballroom was a vast, empty space that was occasionally used for exercise when rain prevented the WAAFs from taking walks, but most days it stood empty, gathering dust. There was a photograph on the wall showing how it had looked in former days. Vast windows ran along the length of one wall and, though the photograph was taken at night, the French windows were open, allowing a glimpse of the terrace beyond. Inside, the ballroom was brightly lit from the intricate crystal chandeliers, illuminating men in evening dress and women in low-waisted gowns, sporting ostrich feathers and other elaborate headdresses. There were no chandeliers now – they had all been removed and replaced with ordinary light bulbs. There was no furniture either, apart from a battered upright piano, so the girls had swept the floors and brought in cushions upon which everyone was now sprawled while Jess explained her plan.

‘Your officers have very kindly arranged for us all to be off duty together now, and then again for three full rehearsals down at the village hall in the week running up to Christmas. After today, I’ll arrange rehearsals around my own watches and pin a schedule in the Rose Room. Write your name against each rehearsal you can attend, so I can work out which scenes to rehearse in each session.’

Then Jess indicated Mrs Grey, who sat on the piano stool. ‘Mrs Grey has kindly agreed to attend as many rehearsals as possible. She’s composed the music for the songs and will accompany us on the piano.’ There was a polite round of applause, and Mrs Grey smiled and nodded.

The rest of the rehearsal was spent with much laughter, reading through the whole script. Milan and Jiří caused gales of laughter as they read their lines as the ugly sisters. In the scene where the ugly sisters vied for Prince Charming’s attention at the ball, May laughed so hard she ended up in a paroxysm of coughing when she attempted to speak her own lines.

‘How will I get through the scene on the day?’ she wheezed when the fit eased. ‘If I can’t stop myself laughing when we’re just reading it through, I’ll never manage when we’re acting it for real, them all dressed up in their ball gowns.’ For she and Jess had already found the perfect costumes for the ugly sisters, both clearly used for previous pantomime dames. One was a hideous

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.