Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  Sampson: I will bite my thumb, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it.

  Abram: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

  Sampson: I bite my thumb, sir.

  Abram: But do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

  All in all, this was too much about thumbs. I bit my own at Shakespeare, hooked my fingernail behind my teeth and made a clicking noise. Perhaps Sampson came back later with better material. I skimmed a few more pages, words, words, words, and found myself back in the classroom, my brain skittering over the surface like a pebble thrown onto thick ice.

  I closed the script again and closed my eyes. As a kid, I’d once dismantled a broken old watch, determined to repair it for Dad, the initial satisfaction at the intricacy of the workings turning to boredom, then frustration, until I’d simply crammed the cogs and springs back in, taped the whole thing shut and secretly dropped it down a drain.

  Monday morning, nine o’clock, and still it poured.

  If I didn’t go now, I could never go, and if the rain was a sign to stay away, it might just as easily be a test of my determination, divine and supernatural forces presenting me with a knight’s errand, a quest! Through the wall, I heard Dad in the bathroom. Thought of the two of us, watching morning TV, talking about the rain …

  Quickly, I dressed, pulled on my old school anorak, stood at the front door with my bike and launched myself into the downpour like a boat down a slipway. Before I reached the end of the close it was as if I’d been pulled from a lake. The wax from my carefully moulded hair stung my eyes, the jeans that I’d selected scoured the inside of my thighs with every turn of the pedal. Rain on summer tarmac created a grey chemical broth and each passing car threw more of this oily sump into my face, burning my eyes and blurring my vision so that even before I faced the steep lane up to the Manor, I was ready to turn back. Quests were bullshit. Still, I cycled uphill against the current then on through the gates, pushed my bike over wet gravel, hurled it onto the lawn, went looking for the orangery, which I remembered as a massive greenhouse with nothing in it. I skirted the Manor, found it, pressed my face up to the glass to see movement through the condensation, found the greenhouse door and threw myself through it.

  ‘… both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our—’

  They were sitting on bentwood chairs in a large circle, and all turned to face me now as I stood, arms out to my sides, clothes plastered to my body, dripping onto the terracotta tiles.

  ‘He made it!’ said Ivor. ‘Big round of applause!’ A few claps against the drumming of the rain. ‘No rush, Charlie. Let’s regroup and start again. Take a few minutes, everyone just stay in your seats.’ I kicked my way through a field of overturned umbrellas towards a spare seat between Lucy and the bespectacled boy called George, reached into the rucksack at my feet and tore the cover free from the wad of papier mâché that had once been my script. Somewhere in the circle, someone laughed.

  ‘Here – take this,’ said Alina, and a fresh copy was passed around the circle. I glimpsed Fran, her wet hair slicked back brilliantly like the synth player in an eighties band. I’d have loved to take in the spectacle of this, but now Helen was touching Fran’s elbow and holding out her hand as if expecting payment. Fran leant back, squeezed her fingers into her pocket, passed her a coin …

  ‘Charlie, a word?’ Ivor and Alina were kneeling at my side, Ivor’s hand on my wet knee. ‘Listen, we’ve got a problem,’ said Ivor in a low voice.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The girl we cast as Benvolio? She’s dropped out.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We wondered, Charlie,’ said Alina, ‘if you would step into the breach and cover for her.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘At the read-through at least,’ said Ivor, ‘then we’ll see.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You’re up for it?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean, I can’t really …’

  ‘You know the play, yes?’

  ‘Yeah! Yeah, yeah, course, yeah!’

  ‘Don’t worry about showing off,’ said Alina. ‘We have zero expectations of you really.’

  ‘By which, we mean, Simon—’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘—Charlie, that we’re expecting a very great deal of you, but not today. No Oscar bids today, okay? Just … get through it.’

  ‘You still want me to read—?’

  ‘Sampson, yes; do a different voice or – my God!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Charlie, stand up!’

  ‘Um – why?’

  ‘Look, everyone, look.’ Ivor took both my hands and pulled me to my feet, holding me at arm’s length as if we might start to waltz. ‘Look! You’re steaming!’

  And sure enough, a swampy mist was rising along the length of my arms, from all over me as the rain-drenched clothes warmed against my body, and while everyone laughed and cooed and clapped, I stood and steamed like a vampire in sunlight.

  ‘You know what this is, everyone?’ bellowed Ivor. ‘This is commitment.’

  Performance Anxiety

  ‘I am Miles and I am playing Romeo!’

  ‘… and I’m Polly, and I’ll be the Nurse!’

  ‘I’m Bernard, I’ll be reading the Prologue and the Prince.’

  ‘Hello, I’m Ivor, I’m the director and I’ll be playing Lord Capulet.’

  ‘I’m Alina, I’m the co-director and choreographer and I will be Lady Capulet.’

  ‘Fran, Juliet.’

  ‘Alex, Mercutio.’

  ‘I’m Helen, designing and playing Gregory until we find an actor.’

  ‘Morning all! I’m Keith and I will be giving my Friar Laurence and various others.’

  ‘My name is Colin and I’ll be playing Peter and the Apothecary!’

  ‘I’m George, I’m playing Paris.’

  ‘Hello, I’m Charlie. I’ll be reading, um, Sampson and just for today Benvolio.’

  ‘I’m Lucy, I’ll be playing Tybalt.’

  And now all eyes turned to two new arrivals, a dark, sleek, middle-aged couple, rather suave, like a husband-and-wife team of spies.

  ‘Hello, everyone! We’re John—’

  ‘—and Lesley.’

  ‘We’re friends of Keith,’ said John, ‘from the world-famous Lakeside Players!’

  ‘And we’ve been drafted in to take on the more mature roles of Lord and Lady Montague.’

  ‘I’m Lady Montague!’ said John, to great gales of laughter. ‘I’m kidding! Not really! Not really!’

  ‘Great! Terrific. Okay, let’s start again and remember – I can’t emphasise this enough – just reading, no acting allowed!’

  ‘Yeah, they always say that,’ said George. ‘Watch, everyone’s going to act their arses off.’

  ‘Bernard, when you’re ready?’ said Ivor. Bernard cleared his throat, settled his reading glasses on the very tip of his nose as if reading a shopping list, and we began.

  ‘Two households, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona where we lay our scene …’

  The Prologue, which had once seemed so slow and dense, was now hurtling past, my own lines ahead like a brick wall, and all the while my one thought was who the hell is Benvolio? Flicking quickly through the pages, I saw that his first speech began at exactly the point where I’d stopped reading. Benvolio was the reason I’d given up. His first exchange was with Sampson, played by me, and I wondered, should I put on a voice to distinguish between the two, an accent, show my range?

  What range? I turned another page and saw Benvolio’s name above a great slab of text, and why had Helen been asking Fran for money, why was she grinning? Why were they all looking at me now? Because it was my line.

  ‘Gregory on my word, we’ll not carry coals.’

  The role of Gregory was read by Helen and it helped somehow to exchange lines with someone who, if not worse, was certainly no better. ‘No, for then we should be colliers,’ she mumbled and we trudged on until it was time for this Benvolio character to s
peak.

  I’d adopted a strategy of saying each word as simply as possible, one by one, like stepping stones across a river, with no variation in speed or emphasis: ‘Part. Fools. Put. Up. Your. Swords. You. Know. Not. What. You. Do.’

  But someone was shouting at me: Lucy Tran, playing a character called Tybalt who also didn’t like me very much, judging from the way she hissed each line, jabbing at my elbow with her pen.

  ‘What? Drawn and talk of peace? I HATE the word as I hate HELL, all Montagues and THEE! Have at thee, COWARD!’

  Clearly Lucy had decided to discard Ivor’s ‘no acting’ guidance, but I continued to dole out the words as if feeding change into a vending machine.

  ‘Madam. An. Hour. Before. The. Worshipped. Sun. Peered. Forth. The. Golden. Window. Of. The. East …’

  Then straight into another scene with Romeo, a seemingly endless dialogue in which Miles sighed and scoffed and laughed, the kind of unreal laughter that is spelt out, ha-ha, ho-ho. The rain had stopped drumming on the glass and there really was no need to shout like that, but on he went, taking loyal Benvolio with him into the next scene and the next, more and more lines for me and I started to think, my God, this part is practically the lead. Why can’t I have fewer lines? Please, let me do less.

  Polly, the nice lady who owned the house, was next, taking us on a road trip of the British Isles, from the East End to the Midlands, Newcastle and beyond, and I realised that the Nurse was ‘comic relief’. Then another sticky patch as I described Tybalt’s death, distributing the words like a child dealing a pack of cards, and after that, thank God, Benvolio finally shut up and I could allow myself to watch and listen until, finally, many hours after we’d set off:

  ‘… for never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.’

  Some silence, an awkward shifting. Pages closed. Ivor, in a sombre voice, said, ‘Well – that was a lot of acting. Clearly there’s work to do. We’re … we’re going to have to pick the bones out of that one. Okay, everyone. Fifteen minutes, everyone. Take fifteen.’

  The company stood and stretched and for the first time, I caught Fran’s eye as she gave a closed-mouth smile: well done you! I was too embarrassed to cross to her, and besides, here was Romeo barring my way.

  ‘So, Benvolio – what did you think?’

  ‘Great. You’re very good.’

  He waved the praise away. ‘First read-through, so I’m still digging, you know? I’ll get even better. But look …’ He placed a large hand on my shoulder. ‘We’ve got a lot of scenes together, yeah? I mean, a lot.’

  ‘Yeah, I noticed that.’

  ‘So, can I just check – you’re not actually going to do it like that, are you?’

  I wasn’t going to do it at all. In the intervals between stamping out the words I’d taken in the performances and even a non-expert like me could see that this thing was doomed, with or without my involvement.

  First, there were the non-actors, the anti-actors, the ones who had nothing on our side – myself, Helen and Bernard. Then, the largest group, actor-impersonators, with their posh voices roller-coasting up and down, strange pauses and stresses, their posture imperious even when seated. It reminded me of the earnestness that small children bring to playing at kings and queens in the playground. Perhaps this was what acting was, playing at kings and queens, but what audience would watch this of their own free will?

  As to Fran Fisher, it’s possible that I was not entirely objective. But at that time, in that greenhouse, I thought she was easily the greatest actor that I had ever seen and her brilliance, it seemed to me, resided in all the things she didn’t do. She didn’t pose or posture or strain, she didn’t put on a wildly different voice to the one that she spoke in. Unlike Miles, she didn’t pause in … all the … wrong places then skitter forward in a fake version of natural speech, but neither did she mumble or throw things away. Somehow the words at which I’d stared, stared and stared, and which had seemed nonsensical to me, suddenly sounded eloquent, urgent and real. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, towards Phoebus’ lodging! she’d said, and though I’d struggle to tell you where the horses came from, why their feet were on fire or where Phoebus lodged, in that moment I had somehow thought, yes, I know just what you mean.

  Talent was not something I felt drawn towards – probably the opposite was true, and I was inclined to resent or jeer or run away from people who were good at things – but every time she spoke, the whole room leant in closer. A character that in my head had been an illustration, a girl on a balcony, now seemed funny and passionate, smart and wilful, rebellious and – a word that my sixteen-year-old self would writhe at – sensual. How could you act those qualities if they weren’t at least a part of who you were? To perform them and not possess them would be like expressing a thought you’d never had. Next to Juliet, Romeo was a whiny lunk. What did she see in him?

  A small crowd had gathered around her now, to Miles’ clear resentment. ‘She’ll be okay, if she does the work,’ he said, and stalked off. Too intimidated to speak to her, I decided to go outside.

  ‘Hey, Charlie,’ she said as I passed, ‘well done!’ I winced and hurried on.

  The sun was out now, as emphatic as the rain it had replaced, and outside the door, Alina and Ivor were standing, heads close together, wrestling with a problem, the problem of me.

  ‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Alina, her hair pulled back to its full extent, hoisting her eyebrows into exasperation. ‘So – what did you think? About the new role?’

  ‘Um, well, I was a bit unsure …’

  ‘Yes, it felt like you were feeling your way!’ said Ivor.

  ‘It was as if you understood perhaps one word in nine,’ said Alina.

  ‘Alina!’ said Ivor.

  ‘Have you thought about stage management?’

  I was about to be fired, and I felt the most wonderful relief. ‘If you want to give it to someone else—’

  ‘No! No, we’d love you to take a crack at it,’ said Ivor.

  ‘Besides, at this moment there is no one else,’ said Alina.

  ‘Though that’s not the reason!’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘We’d like you to persevere, for a week maybe.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, keen to get away.

  ‘But can I ask,’ said Ivor, lowering his voice, ‘have you ever actually been in a play before?’

  I laughed. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘So,’ said Alina, ‘what brings you here, Charlie?’

  ‘Um. To meet new people?’ I began to look around for an alibi. A little way off Alex, Mercutio, was sitting on a bench, rolling a cigarette, a trilby tipped back on his head. New people. I raised a hand to Alex.

  ‘Well, you’re going to be great,’ said Ivor. ‘In time.’

  ‘And if not,’ said Alina, ‘trust me – stage management!’

  I raised my hand again. At school I’d learnt that it was not appropriate for a boy to comment favourably on another boy’s looks or to even think such a thing, but Alex was extremely beautiful, long and languorous like a dancer. In the role, in life, he had the same amused look, a single bracket on one side of his mouth, amusement that I now felt must be directed at me. But he swept the rain water from the bench with the edge of his hand.

  ‘Come. Join me.’ Approaching, I felt, as I always would with Alex, that I should ask for his autograph.

  Alex Asante – he was the other one with talent. We’d felt it the moment he’d started to speak. In one of our early lessons, our French teacher had promised that if we worked hard enough we’d eventually enter a kind of trance state in which the foreignness would fall away and we’d speak, think and even dream in a beautiful new language. I’d never found myself remotely near this state – I’d walked out of the exam after half an hour – but there’d been something appealing about the idea, and, as with Fran, there was the same kind of immediacy when Alex spoke. I had no idea who Queen Mab was, or why she didn’t turn up on stage, but I
knew what he was getting at, and I felt I ought to let him know.

  ‘You’re very good at this.’

  He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Only by comparison.’

  ‘No, really, I mean it.’

  He lifted his shoulders high, then dropped them. ‘It’s my standard-issue gay-outsider performance,’ he said. ‘You did very well.’

  ‘I was shit.’

  He laughed. ‘Just think of yourself as … unformed clay.’

  ‘I think they’re going to sack me.’

  He tapped the words out on my knee. ‘You. Did. Just. Fine. Besides, they can’t sack you, the Arts Council won’t let them. It’s about the experience! Transforming young lives through Shakespeare! For as long as you turn up, you’re in. As long as you’re keen.’

  ‘Oh, he’s keen, aren’t you, Charlie?’ said Helen, arriving now. ‘He’s very keen – Fran and I even had a bet on it.’ She held the pound coin out between finger and thumb. ‘Fran said you wouldn’t come back, and I said you would and I bet her a quid and so I won.’ She ruffled my hair. ‘Bless!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Alex.

  ‘Charlie’s in love.’

  Fran was approaching. ‘Helen, pack it in,’ I pleaded.

  ‘He’s in love with theatre, isn’t that right, Charlie? That’s why he’s here. Oh, hi Fran! I was just saying what a complete theatre-nut Charlie is.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fran.

  ‘It’s a recent thing.’ I shrugged. ‘More as, you know, a watcher.’

  Helen grinned. ‘I can’t tell you how often, at school, Charlie and his mates will be, I don’t know, setting fire to someone’s homework, and one of the boys will say, hey, this is just like that scene in Hedda Gabler.’