Anyway, between all of that, there’s barely enough time for a lightning quick shower before I have to hop into the car and start the marathon, two-and-a-half-hour drive to the city.
Right then. As I pull out onto the motorway, I make a decision. I’m going to use this incredibly rare bit of alone time to try to clear my head and concentrate on nothing but the audition ahead. So as I boot the car up into fourth gear, I start doing all the little pre-audition relaxation tricks I remember from long ago: some deep yoga breathing for starters, in for two and out for four, in for two and out for four…easy does it…then I start to creatively visualise a positive outcome…imagining myself bouncing into a rehearsal room…being a proper, paid actor again…being back in the city and far, far away from Grey Gardens, sorry, I mean, The Moorings…earning money at a career that I actually love and adore…after three long years of treading water by stacking shelves in an empty bookshop…oh and let’s not forget sweeping dead headed roses off the floor while doing yet another part-time job in the local florist’s…then I think back to that book I read because everyone was reading it at the time…The Secret…So I focus on attracting only a positive outcome and not dwelling on forgetting my lines or blanking out with nerves or similar…
Anyway, I’m just drifting into a lovely, soothing, zoned-out happy place, when suddenly my phone rings, totally shattering my concentration.
Audrey, surprise, surprise.
‘Where are you, Annie?’ she whimpers in the little-girl-lost voice. ‘I’m at The Moorings and Mrs Brophy tells me you’ve disappeared off to Dublin for the day yet again…can that be right? Would you really do such a selfish thing without telling me? I worried myself sick about you yesterday and you know how worry brings on one of my little turns. And not a phone call from you for the whole day, nothing.’
Do not let the guilt get to you, I tell myself sternly, at all costs, don’t allow her to guilt trip you.
‘Because I’m still not feeling very well today, you know, after all the worry of yesterday, and I need you to run a few little errands for me…’
I hear her out as patiently as I can and explain that everything is fine, and that I’m just going to Dublin for an unexpected audition. A pause, and I’m half-wondering if she’ll bother to ask me anything at all about it. You know, stuff a normal person would ask, like what’s the play, what part am I up for…but no, she doesn’t. Of course not. There’s the usual half second time delay while she filters the information I’m offering, then immediately figures out whether it’ll affect her negatively in any way. And decides that yes, it does.
‘But that’s no use to me, Annie, I’m doing my Christmas cards today and I need you to be here. You should have been here to help me yesterday and it’s not my fault that you weren’t.’
I can just picture her as she says this, all swelled up like a gobbler with enough ammunition to bitch about me behind my back for weeks to come. Then I sigh so deeply it’s like it’s coming from my feet upwards and wonder what she wants me to do exactly? Write out all the cards for her? Wouldn’t surprise me.
Anyway, at this stage I’ve had years of practice in dealing with her, so I draw on all my experience and do what I always do: lock my voice into its lowest register and at all costs, don’t let her turn me into her emotional punchbag. I calmly tell her that although I’ll be gone for most of the day, I’ll be back later in the evening and will be perfectly happy to take care of whatever she needs then.
‘But you’re not listening to me, Annie, I have to get my Christmas cards posted today and I need you to get to the post office before it shuts. You know perfectly well I can’t go by myself. Standing in queues brings on one of my weak spells and I’ve really not been myself all morning, you know. And another thing – you still don’t have the Christmas tree up yet, Annie. I don’t understand, what exactly have you been doing with your time?’
I let the veiled insult pass and suggest that, since it’s so urgent, maybe she should just ask Jules to do the post office run for her?
‘Well if I’d known you were flitting off to Dublin for the day then of course I would have, but Jules was still asleep when I left the house and I don’t like to wake her.’
I can’t help smiling in spite of myself; typical Jules. She’s a terrible stickler for getting her twelve hours’ sleep. Plus, she always says that even if she’s lying wide awake in bed it’s a far, far better thing to stay put, than to get up and enter Audrey-land. And, in all fairness, can you blame the girl?
‘Oh and another thing, Annie, when I went upstairs to use the bathroom just now, I had a little look around and I couldn’t help noticing that you still hadn’t made your bed and that there were unlaundered clothes belonging to poor Dan strewn all over the floor as well. You know I hate to say it, but I really think you should think about organising your household chores a little bit better. It really upsets me when I see that the house isn’t being cared for properly and no man likes to live in a messy house you know…’
Just then I lose the signal on my phone, so mercifully this conversation ends before the mental image of Audrey combing through our bedroom when I’m not there takes root deep in my psyche.
Note to self: if I don’t get this job, then I’m asking Dan if we can buy a caravan for our back garden so we can go and live in it instead. A little mobile home that could sit in the back garden and look like it was adopted by The Moorings out of charity. With deadbolts on every door and window, to ensure some minor degree of privacy. Or if it comes to it, then I’ll just move out and live in the shagging thing on my own. Because life in a four-wheel trailer certainly couldn’t be much worse than life at Grey Gardens, could it?
Anyroadup, I arrive in Dublin a good forty-five minutes before the audition starts, park the car and head back for the National theatre. It’s a miserable winter’s day – icy cold, with a sharp wind blowing and only a weak, watery sun desperately trying to break through the heavy overhead clouds…but to me, with an audition to go to and with a spring in my step, it’s only bloody beautiful.
Funny, but in The Sticks I’m completely surrounded by natural beauty and probably the most stunning scenery you’re ever likely to see, yet somehow, I never seem to notice it. But being here, back in the city and striding purposefully down a busy, bustling street packed with stressed-out Christmas shoppers tripping over each other to grab their last minute bargains…everyone laden down with bulging bags, looking frozen and panicky and with mounting hysteria practically ricocheting off them…and I can’t help thinking that it’s just the loveliest sight I’ve seen in I don’t know how long. But then I suppose, after living in the dark for so long, a glimpse of the light can suddenly make you giddy.
Tell you one thing; even if I don’t get this job, at least one good thing has already come out of it – just being back in the city and doing an audition has put the bounce back into me and aligned my spine again, as if I just got a jolt of vitamin B straight to my heart. And a flood of gorgeous, cheering memories come back too; when Dan and I first left school, we both came to Dublin to study at Trinity College, him to do veterinary medicine, me, drama studies.
We shared flat after flat in the city, gradually working our poverty-stricken, dole-poor way from renting places where the washing machine had to double up as the dining table, all the way up to the dizzy heights of actually owning our very own apartment right after we got married. Happy, happy days – by far the happiest of my life – and now it’s like every street corner I turn holds a very different memory of a very different time.
Buoyed up with adrenaline, I run into a little coffee shop just across the road from the theatre to grab a bottle of water and no one knows me or any of my