The Girl in the Third Row

Kabir had one week to learn forty-three lines, and he could not get past the third.

"To be... or rather, to... no. Hold on." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Why did Mr Joshi give me the lead? I get sweaty in assemblies. I once forgot my own name during roll call."

The auditorium of Greenfield School was empty, hushed and a little too large. Rows of faded red seats stretched away into dusk. The big wooden stage had a smell all its own: dust, varnish and old curtains. It was six o'clock, the cleaners had gone home, and Kabir was the only person in the building.

Or so he thought.

"You are rushing the second line," said a voice.

He nearly fell off the stage.

In the third row, near the aisle, sat a girl in an old-fashioned school dress, her hair in two neat plaits tied with white ribbon. She had a folded paper on her knee and a pencil behind her ear, and she was watching him with the polite attention of a teacher who has seen it all.

"Sorry," said Kabir, his heart thumping. "I did not think anyone was here."

"I am always here." She smiled. "Say it again. Slower. Imagine you are telling it to a friend."

"Er... who are you?"

"Meera. I am in Class Seven." She tilted her head. "Well. I was."

Kabir looked at the ribbons. At the dress, which had a collar he had only ever seen in photographs on the old notice board. At the third row, where the seat next to her sat perfectly still, and where, he noticed with a prickle of curiosity, the girl's feet did not quite touch the floor.

A cold feeling ran down his back. But it was a small, curious cold, not a frightened one. He had spent his whole life being frightened of auditoriums, and somehow a girl in plaits was not the worst thing that had ever sat in one.

"You are a ghost," he said.

"That is a rather rude way to put it," said Meera, "but yes. Is that all right?"

He considered it seriously. "You do not look scary."

"Thank you. I have been working on it for sixty years."

He laughed, and it came out squeaky, and then he laughed properly. Something loosened in his chest.

"I never got to be in the play," Meera explained, once he had climbed down and sat two seats away from her. "It was my first year here. The Annual Day, 1962. I was going to be the queen. I had practised for months. The night before the show, I stayed here late to run my lines, just like you." She smoothed her skirt. "That is all. I do not know how it happened. I just... did not leave. And ever since, I sit here, and listen to everybody else's performances, and every year I think: next year, perhaps, someone will let me help."

"Help?"

"I know every line of every play that has ever been done on this stage. I know where to stand, where to look, what to do with your hands when they will not behave." She sat up straighter. "I am an excellent prompter. Shall we begin?"

They began.

It turned out that Meera was a very strict coach. "Breathe from the stomach," she said, "not the throat." She taught him to find a single face in the dark of the auditorium and speak to that one person. "Not the crowd. One friend. The rest will follow."

"What if I forget?"

"Then you will pause," said Meera, "and I will be in the third row, and I will mouth the next word."

"Everyone will see you moving your lips."

"Kabir," she said kindly, "no one ever sees me."

Every evening that week, after the last bell, he came to rehearse. Every evening, Meera was there, sitting up in the third row with her pencil. By Wednesday he could do the first act without stopping. By Friday he could do all of it, with feeling. On Saturday evening, Mr Joshi, passing by the auditorium, paused at the door and listened for a full ten minutes. Then he went quietly away without disturbing anyone.

On Annual Day the hall was packed. Parents fanned themselves with programmes. Little brothers kicked the backs of seats. Behind the curtain Kabir's knees knocked together, and his mouth was so dry that his tongue felt like a sock.

"I cannot do it," he whispered to nobody.

From somewhere on the other side of the curtain, he thought he heard, very faintly, a pencil tapping twice on a wooden seat: Two taps. Breathe.

The curtain rose.

Kabir looked out across the sea of faces and found, in the third row, a very small, very steady smile. He took a long breath from his stomach. He spoke to one friend.

He did not forget a single line.

The applause, when it came, was like rain on a tin roof. People stood up. His mother wiped her eyes with her scarf. Mr Joshi, at the side of the stage, simply put a hand over his heart.

When it was over and the crowd was drifting out, Kabir slipped back to the auditorium alone.

The third row was empty. But on the seat, where a girl in plaits had been sitting, lay a single old programme, yellowed at the edges, printed in blue ink. Annual Day, 1962. Greenfield School. Under CAST, in a cramped, careful hand, someone had pencilled in a name that was not in the original list: Meera, The Queen.

And beside it, in the same pencil, a small tick, the kind teachers make beside work well done.

Kabir put the programme in his pocket. Then he turned to the empty rows of faded red seats and, feeling only a little silly, took a bow, a low one, to the third row.

"Thank you, Meera," he said.

The heavy stage curtain stirred, though there was no draught. And somewhere above the rafters, soft as a ribbon, came the sound of one pair of hands, clapping.