Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  ‘Helen …’

  ‘We have to tell him: Charlie, for just one minute, stop talking about plays. But no, it’s Pinter this, Stoppard that, Chekhov, Chekhov, Chekhov …’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Alex, head to one side, amused. ‘What’s your favourite?’

  Some time passed.

  ‘So hard to choose.’

  ‘Cherry Orchard, isn’t it?’ said Helen.

  ‘Orchard’s good.’

  ‘Ha! Orchard,’ barked Helen. ‘Yeah, that’s what they call it, Charlie and the boys: Orchard. Who wants to come to London with me Saturday? I’ve got matinee tickets for Orchard—’

  ‘Maybe we should go and eat,’ I said, and walked quickly away.

  Beginnings

  This was the first occasion the four of us spent time together – Alex, Helen, Fran and me – and given what we became, it’s strange that I don’t remember more. I know that rather than eat the chickpea casserole we played a formless game of badminton with no teams or net and discarded, moulting shuttlecocks and half-strung rackets – hoops, really – that we found on the lawn, and I remember, too, my surprise at taking part rather than watching with the others. It’s with these small moments of inclusion that immense friendships start, which is not to say that there was anything spontaneous or relaxed about it. If I’d failed to speak Shakespeare then it seemed doubly important that I excel at badminton. ‘Charlie, you look so serious,’ Fran said as I cursed myself, swiping at air with a string-less racket.

  In the afternoon, we returned to our circle of bentwood chairs to turn our attention to the text – always ‘the text’ rather than ‘the play’.

  ‘Before we start, remember,’ said Ivor, ‘that although the text is called Romeo and Juliet, it’s really about everyone in this world. For Romeo, sure, of course it’s Romeo’s story, and for Juliet it’s her story, but for Paris – well, it’s a play about Paris! We’ve all got these great passions, these amazing private stories, secret loves and hates. So for the Nurse, it’s about the Nurse, for the Servant, it’s the Servant’s story, and for Benvolio?’

  Ivor looked to me, expectantly.

  ‘It’s a play about … Benvolio?’

  ‘Yes! That’s right! Because just as in life, there is no such thing as a minor character!’

  At my side, Miles made a sceptical sound. This socialistic ensemble-talk was all well and good, but everyone knew it was a play about Romeo. Who’d give up an August night to see a play called Benvolio and the Apothecary? I wasn’t sure I would, and I was Benvolio. As a character, he seemed entirely blank. With no good jokes, no family, no love life, he seemed to bore or irritate everyone he spoke to. Everything he said concerned the actions of others, and when he wasn’t informing, he was pleading with people to stop fighting or giving information that the audience already knew. He was Romeo’s best friend, but you could tell that Romeo preferred Mercutio, and when Benvolio abruptly stopped talking halfway through the play, it was hard to believe that anyone would mind. At least Sampson had the stuff about thumbs. Benvolio was a sidekick, a conformist and observer; characters confided in him but felt no need to listen in return. Amazing, really, that people I barely knew had cast me so well.

  The afternoon wore on with a classroom air, the same overwhelming torpor at two forty-five. In Verona they’d have had a siesta, but we forged on and when my head lolled, I’d snap straight and rack my brains for something smart and incisive that would impress Fran and show an insight I didn’t possess. But I didn’t have the knack of talking about characters as if they were real, as if we were the same person. ‘The thing about me,’ insisted Lucy, ‘is that I live to fight,’ and I tried to square this with the silent girl I’d sat behind in double Biology, while all the time the glass roof warmed the still air, and the conversation turned in circles and perhaps if I just closed my eyes …

  I snapped awake again. I’d resolved that I would not look at Fran unless she was speaking, but it was those with the least to say who spoke the most and so she sat with her chin on her raised knee and listened.

  Eventually the conversation turned to the themes of prejudice and division, and Ivor adopted a hushed and sincere manner, leaning forward, hands clasped like a young cleric.

  ‘So – what keeps us apart? As communities? Not in the play, but in general, in real life, now. What are the grievances and prejudices that divide us, not just as lovers, but as friends? And remember there are no wrong answers.’

  ‘No wrong answers’ was another thing people said without meaning it. We all knew that there were wrong answers, except perhaps for Miles, who took on Ivor’s concerned tone and leant forward in his chair.

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s racism,’ said Miles and, by way of clarification, ‘judging someone by the colour of their skin.’

  ‘Ha!’ laughed Alex. ‘I think it’s a little late for that, casting-wise. Look around.’

  ‘Not in this production – there’s you, there’s Lucy …’

  ‘So all the white people versus two non-white people,’ said Lucy.

  ‘White versus all the other races,’ said Alex.

  ‘With white as the default—’ said Lucy.

  ‘I’m just saying, it’s there as a theme.’

  ‘—unless some of you black up,’ said Alex.

  ‘No one’s blacking up!’ said Ivor.

  ‘I know!’ said Miles. ‘But a different production with a different cast.’

  ‘In a town with more than one Asian person,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Fine, forget it!’ said Miles, holding both hands in front of him. ‘Christ, I thought there were no wrong answers!’

  ‘Okay, move on, what else divides people? Remember, we’re talking in general, not necessarily in the play.’

  ‘Can I just say – age,’ said Polly. ‘I think there’s a terrific gap between the generations, both in the play and in life.’

  ‘Good, good, good,’ said Ivor, and while the older cast members nodded vigorously, the younger ones seemed keen to move on.

  ‘Class,’ said George, his hand over his mouth.

  ‘In life perhaps,’ said Alina, ‘but in the play, Shakespeare is careful to point out that they’re “both alike in dignity”.’

  ‘Or, sort of connected – culture,’ said George. ‘Taste, music. Cultural tribes.’

  ‘Blur versus Oasis.’

  ‘North and south.’

  ‘No!’ Alina winced. ‘No more regional accents, I beg you.’

  ‘East Sussex versus West Sussex.’

  ‘Besides, they’re both from Verona, so—’

  ‘Football!’ said Keith, our Friar Laurence. ‘So it’s like a United/City, Arsenal/Tottenham thing.’

  ‘Come on you Spurs!’ chanted Colin Smart.

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Education,’ said Helen. ‘It’s like when we were at school, and the Merton Grange boys would always duff up the Chatsborne kids down the precinct.’

  ‘They didn’t always duff them up,’ said Fran.

  ‘Well, no, we did,’ said Helen, laughing. ‘Always.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Fran and kicked Helen’s chair.

  ‘Mer-ton Grange, Mer-ton Grange,’ chanted Colin Smart.

  ‘Just grow up!’ said Lucy.

  ‘No, that’s good,’ said Ivor, ‘we can use that aggression, we can use that feeling.’

  ‘But isn’t the problem,’ said a voice that I was surprised to find was my own. ‘Sorry – isn’t the problem that there is no reason? In the play, I mean. All the stuff people fight about in life, it might be irrational but it’s something you can give a name to. In the play, it’s not ’cause one side’s posh or black or white or whatever, it’s just what they’re used to. Fighting, lashing out, smashing things up. The boys mainly. They’re just confused, angry boys.’

  Ivor took this in and nodded, and I looked back to the floor. The discussion moved on and in the end it was decided that the Montagues could maybe wear red T-shirts and the Capulets per
haps blue, and that this would probably be enough to make the point.

  Hobbies and Interests: Socialising

  ‘Hello there,’ she said.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I thought I’d walk with you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Unless you want to rush off.’

  ‘No, let’s walk. I’d like that.’

  And so this became our routine, like walking to school with someone, self-conscious and formal to begin with then eventually a habit. Along the drive, left at the gatehouse, down the long, tree-shaded lane, taking care to walk a little way behind the rest of the crowd, in no hurry to reach the bottom of the hill.

  The ground had dried out but the air under the canopy of trees retained the freshness of the rain, the scent of bruised leaves and warm damp earth. We began with certain biographical information, the kind of questions you might find on a form. I’d read in some men’s magazine that a subtle way of making girls like you was to get them to talk about themselves. ‘Ask questions,’ it advised, ‘make them think you’re interested,’ and so I soon discovered that her parents were Graham and Claire and she liked them about as much as you could like parents. ‘I mean I don’t call them by their first names or anything, we’re not weird.’ Graham Fisher was something administrative in the railways, was pragmatic and serious and worked long hours – ‘but at least he makes the trains run on time. That’s his joke, his one joke. He’s a real dad, if you know what I mean.’ Claire was a librarian in the next town over; she was the arty, bookish one and also her best friend, ‘which sounds weird, I know. Maybe I should get more friends. My own age, who haven’t given birth to me. Anyway, she’s a laugh, Mum; I’m lucky, there’s nothing I can’t tell her. There’s loads I don’t tell her, but in theory. No complaints, not yet anyway. I’m sure I will. One day.’ As with people who had good teeth and confident smiles, I was instinctively suspicious of people who got on with their parents, imagining that they must have some secret binding them together. Cannibalism perhaps. She even seemed to like her brother, who was older and very smart and studying Maths at Sheffield University. ‘He’s the clever one. That’s what they call him, Clever One, as a joke, which I love as you can imagine.’

  At intervals, she’d leave a gap for me to fill in my part of the form, but I would leap in with my pre-prepared questions, slapping them down like cards in a game of snap, priming the next question while she answered. This gave our chat an edgy, interrogatory air, as if I was hoping she might accidentally confess to a series of local burglaries, and the effort involved meant that I couldn’t always listen as carefully as I wanted to.

  ‘So Charlie, what about—’

  ‘So d’you want to be an actress, d’you think?’ It’s also possible that she’d noticed what I was doing.

  ‘Me? God, no. Or rather I don’t know. I mean I like acting, it’s why I’m here. Same reason you’re here—’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But that’s because I like the people and rehearsals and the words. I like all the corny melodrama of it. Putting on a show, right here in the barn! Three weeks and nothing’s ready! I love all of that, but the actual showing-off bit, I’d be lying if I said I hate it, I’m shy, but it’s a bit … egotistical, isn’t it? A bit daft and vain, all that “look at me, look at me!”’

  ‘You are really good at it.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You are. I mean I understood every word and I’m thick.’

  ‘I don’t think any part of that is true. But anyway, what about—?’

  ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘When I grow up?’

  ‘When you grow up.’

  ‘You sound like a careers officer.’

  ‘Am I boring?’

  ‘No, I just … I quite like French, but that’s not a job, is it, far as I know. Wish it was – getting paid for just, I don’t know, smoking and having affairs. Bit of a stereotype there. I had this idea I might do Law, because you get to wear wigs and make speeches, but if that’s the reason then I might as well act, which I don’t want to do because, well, anyway.’ She waved the subject away. ‘It’s a long way off. Except suddenly it isn’t, is it? Now it’s all “choose your options”, which is just another way of saying “narrow the possibilities”. Every time you make a choice, you can hear doors slamming in the distance. They tell you, you can be anything you want, oh, except the following …’

  No one had ever told me that I could be anything I wanted. Computer Science, Art, Graphic Design – these were my theoretical fields, and I’d sometimes entertained fantasies of myself at a drawing board in an office full of drawing boards, sleeves rolled up, and though I had no idea what was on the board, I liked the idea of doing something creative but technical, all clutch pencils and shading. But that idea had been abandoned in June. Now, when I tried to imagine anything past September, I felt once again that fear of drifting, an infinity of me and Dad on the sofa, looking for jobs on Ceefax with Pasta Madras on our laps. As far as talent was concerned, I could cross-hatch, I could play Doom and I was working on my tan. Best to change the subject.

  ‘So why not just do what you’re brilliant at, and be an actress?’

  ‘That’s very nice of you.’ She shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘The thing is, here I get to play Juliet, out there it’d just be, I don’t know, wenches and milkmaids. I had this English teacher once, he used to really encourage me; you know, a real mentor, a Mr Chips or whatever. We used to enter these school competitions, reciting Shakespeare and poetry, and he said, exact words, I had a nice, pretty face but no one could see it through all that puppy fat.’

  ‘But you’re not even fat.’

  ‘Too fat to make a living as an actress, apparently.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Because there are loads of fat actresses?’

  ‘No, because I think you look …’ In the micro-second between words, I’d skimmed my thesaurus, discarded beautiful as too strong, nice as too bland, great as too groovy. Pretty? Too twee. Attractive? Too frank.

  ‘… lovely,’ I said, doubting the word as it left my mouth. It sounded like luv-er-ly, three syllables.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, all right then.’

  And shouldn’t it be luv-ly? Just two?

  ‘So what about you?’

  Too late now. In my distraction, I’d allowed a question through. ‘Are you going to take up acting professionally, or—?’ and she almost made it to the end of the question before a blurt of laughter stopped her.

  ‘Bit rude,’ I said.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I thought I was pretty good.’

  ‘You were, you really were! I’m sorry.’

  ‘And that was just the first time reading it.’

  ‘Really? Then you were amazing.’

  ‘Not amazing, I was just trying out something different.’

  ‘It was a choice.’

  ‘Yeah, I want to play him as someone who leaves a gap between each word. Like he’s had a bad accident.’

  ‘Blow to the head.’

  ‘That’s his – what d’you call it?’

  ‘His backstory?’

  ‘His backstory. He’s been, I don’t know, kicked in the head by Tybalt’s horse.’

  ‘It’s a bold and fresh approach.’

  ‘I think so.’ We walked on, grinning. ‘After the read-through, Miles came up to me and said, “You’re not going to do it like that, are you?”’

  She laughed. ‘I saw that. I watched him when you were reading and he looked really angry. Like “I can’t be expected to work with this!”’

  ‘I think it’s ’cause he’s jealous.’

  ‘In the face of fresh talent.’

  ‘In the face of fresh, unspoilt talent.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s like when people saw Brando for the first time.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s not bad, it’s just new, and he can’t handle it.’

  ‘You�
��re raw.’

  ‘That’s it. I’m too raw.’

  ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘Too dangerous.’

  Ahead of us, the crowd had stopped and turned to look, and we slowed so as not to catch up.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘given how raw I am …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Can I stop now?’

  She punched me hard on the shoulder. ‘No! You’ve got to keep coming!’

  ‘There’s no point!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I can’t do it!’

  ‘You can learn, you’ll get better, you’re just reading for the first time.’

  ‘It’s not that. I don’t understand what I’m saying. To be honest I don’t even like plays.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, really. So why did you come back?’

  ‘You know why! You bribed me!’

  We walked a while in silence, eyes fixed forward. After a while she nudged me and then, when I turned to her, looked away, though not so quickly that I couldn’t see her smile.

  ‘Not a bribe, an incentive.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And also I didn’t say I would.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I said I’d think about it. And I will do so, during the course of this week’s rehearsals.’ I threw my head back and groaned. ‘Okay, how about this – every lunchtime for an hour, we’ll find somewhere quiet, the two of us and we’ll go through the play together, line by line.’

  ‘You’re going to teach me?’ I said.

  ‘Yep. It’s going to be really uncomfortable.’

  I groaned again. I didn’t want to be taught any more, least of all by someone my own age, someone I liked, but …

  ‘Trust me, I’m an excellent teacher. Strict but fair. Come on. It’ll be fun. Besides, who else can play the part the way you do?’

  ‘Well, that is true.’

  ‘We need you. Which is a mark of how truly desperate we are.’

  We’d reached the bottom of the lane now. At the bus stop the rest of the company waited and watched. ‘Sorry, I feel like I’ve just talked about myself. Tomorrow it’s your turn.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see.’