Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  ‘Hello, my name is also Chris!’ (gales of laughter – I swear, these people) ‘and I’m also going to be helping with design and stage management!’ Chris and Chris had the same lank hair, the same mushroomy complexions, the same immense bunches of keys and jangling penknives attached to the hip of the same black jeans with a prison warden’s silver chain. One of Polly’s distant outhouses had been transformed into the tech headquarters, commanded by Helen from behind an immense architect’s drawing board, and here they laughed at private jokes, surrounded by squalor that in itself seemed like a set, the den of a computer hacker or serial killer: Coke cans, scraps of balsa wood, filthy, furred mugs and half-eaten pasties, squeezed-out tubes of aircraft glue, empty crisp packets, scissors and scalpels and rolls of chicken wire. Somewhere in the mess they’d concealed their own toasted-sandwich maker and a supply of white bread, processed cheese and brown sauce, and this became a source of great envy. But ‘Actors – Keep Out!’ said a handwritten sign in comic-book lettering, and we were further discouraged from entering by the blare of Goth (Chris’s choice) and burbling trance (the choice of Chris), which they played at volumes loud enough to end a siege.

  The private coaching continued long after I’d expected Fran to lose interest, returning to the meadow, turning the pages, scene by scene, line by line. ‘We’re working on my part!’ I insisted as Helen slapped the dried grass from my back, but it’s true that an awareness of the proximity of Fran’s hip or head would sometimes cause my attention to lapse, to wonder what might happen if I were to lean across and kiss her while she explained the importance of iambics. ‘You kiss by the book’, says Juliet in the play. If it ever happened, I wanted very much to kiss by the book.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ said Fran.

  ‘I’m listening,’ and as the days went by I did improve. Just as watching a foreign film with subtitles can lull you into believing you know the language, reading scenes with Fran provided the illusion of competence, and I found that I stumbled less, and sometimes got through great stretches with an eloquence that took me by surprise. Reading with Fran was like playing tennis with a competitor who wanted me to win, knocking the ball back courteously to my racket. Self-consciousness and embarrassment faded. I still didn’t know what to do with my hands but I no longer spoke as if reading from the bottom of an optician’s chart.

  Of course all this would be wasted if, as expected, I was replaced. It was one thing to hide in the crowd scenes but to speak and be heard, this was an entirely different matter, and I imagined Ivor and Alina engaged in frantic backstage negotiations with members of the Lakeside Players, the Cygnet Amateur Dramatic Guild, the Chalk Down Stagers, for any boy, girl, man or woman who might take my place. On Monday, I wouldn’t have minded. By Thursday, I wasn’t so sure.

  This was to be the day of my first rehearsal with Romeo, nodding and listening mainly, and some laughter too, and so we practised, lying on our backs in the long grass of the orchard.

  ‘Ah ha ha ha! Something like that?’

  ‘I like it. I like the little shake of the head,’ said Fran.

  ‘Sort of “Romeo, you crack me up!”’

  ‘Yes. I got that. Let go of your chin though.’

  ‘Ha-ha!’

  ‘Oh man, Charlie, you’re bad at this.’

  ‘Okay, you do it.’

  ‘Fine, watch.’ Fran laughed, entirely naturally. ‘How was that?’

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘Oh, because I didn’t hold my chin? Well, fuck you, Daniel Day-Lewis. I don’t know why you don’t just go the whole hog and slap your thigh.’

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘Exactly. Little Dick Whittington-type thing.’

  ‘Slap thigh. Okay, maybe I’ll try that.’

  ‘Or you could just be natural. Be yourself.’

  ‘If I was being myself, I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘And yet here we are,’ she said. ‘Here we are.’ Up at the house, the triangle sounded. ‘And that marks the end of today’s session.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For teaching me how to laugh again.’

  ‘Ha.’

  We walked back together. ‘How are you feeling?’ she said.

  ‘Bit nervous. I’m pretty sure they’re going to replace me after this.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘Whenever I speak in the first scene, I keep seeing Alina pinch the bridge of her nose and shake her head very slowly. I say, “Part, fools! Put up your swords!” and I swear, she puts her fingers in her ears.’

  ‘Still, they’re not going to replace you.’

  ‘But if they do?’

  ‘Then I’ll resign from the production. We all will. We’ll down sticks.’

  ‘Would you do that for me?’

  ‘No. No, probably not.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well, I’ve learnt the lines now.’

  ‘That’s very touching.’

  ‘But they’re not going to replace you, so you’re fine.’

  ‘But if they do …’

  ‘What?’

  We were at the house now, the large room Polly had cleared for rehearsals, French windows open to the air. ‘Do we still get to go out for coffee?’

  ‘You’re obsessed with this coffee.’

  ‘Or dinner or something?’

  ‘Dinner. There’s posh. Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Angler’s?’

  ‘Steak night or the Sunday carvery?’

  ‘That would be completely up to you. Lady’s choice.’

  ‘It is tempting.’

  ‘Or we could just … see each other.’

  ‘You don’t think we see each other?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Because I am literally looking right at you.’

  ‘I mean away from here, from all this …’

  ‘Here he comes now,’ Miles was approaching, gulping water as he walked, ‘Britain’s most hydrated young actor. What’s he wearing?’ It was a basketball top, the neckline scooped well below his sternum, bare at the sides. ‘It’s a netball tabard. Well, good luck. Hey, what was the name of your best friend? In real life?’

  ‘Harper.’

  ‘Just imagine that you’re talking to Harper. Imagine you’ve both met girls that you really like and you’ve got to talk about it.’

  Was this subtext again? ‘Okay.’

  ‘You talk about that stuff, don’t you?’

  ‘Not really. Mainly we beat each other up.’

  ‘Well, pretend that you talk. That’s all this scene is, two young men talking honestly and openly about their feelings. They managed it in 1594. Imagine if it still happened now. Imagine a world where you’re not all quite so repressed.’

  Improvisation

  I’d not heard from Harper since the fight with Lloyd. On Monday and Wednesday I’d worked my shift at the petrol station and stolen more cards in preparation for the handover, but he had not appeared. Phone messages, too, had gone unanswered and I wondered if perhaps some line had been crossed. In the great catalogue of physical and emotional violence that we’d visited upon each other over the years – the pushing off the pier, the fireworks thrown, the air-rifle scars – the pool-ball incident was surely minor. We’d once played a game in the field behind Harper’s house, ‘Agincourt’ we called it, taking it in turns to put on a blindfold and hurl three professional tungsten-tipped darts high, high in the air while the rest of us picked a spot and had to stand still, shoulders hunched, eyes closed, waiting for the darts to rain down. The game could only really end when someone received an injury and sure enough, before too long there was an audible thunk and Fox stood with a single dart standing vertically from his skull while Lloyd, who had thrown the thing, curled up in a ball, unable to breathe for laughter. All of this was normal, ‘classic Lloyd’, with no hard feelings. But throw one single pool ball at someone’s head …

  Now I was forced to imagine a life without
Harper. In the chaos of our family’s self-destruction he had quietly and unassumingly made himself present and though I could hardly recall a conversation that might be considered personal or honest, in the strange, mute semaphore of teenage boys he’d communicated a sense of care and somehow passed on the message to the others, an unspoken command to be, if not kind, then not actively cruel. At the time, I’d even gone so far as to imagine I was a little in love with Harper. In a dog-eared library book on the ‘facts of life’ I’d read that ‘homosexual’ crushes were quite common amongst teenage boys. I knew that boarding schools were rife with that stuff, and might there not be a Merton Grange version? Meeting Fran had rendered the theory obsolete but I still found that I missed Harper.

  Would he ever know about Fran? The thing is, Harper – Martin – I’ve got tangled up in this, well, this Shakespeare thing, and, don’t laugh, there’s this girl in it, not like the others, she’s funny, really smart and cool and we can talk and talk … you should meet her! But the scenario evaporated even as I tried to give it words and I was forced to accept that they really were better at this in the Renaissance.

  ‘Tell me in sadness, who is that you love?’

  ‘What, shall I groan and tell thee?’

  ‘Groan? Why, no, but sadly tell me who.’

  ‘Okay, that’s great, let’s stop there. So – tell me, what do you two know about these boys’ relationship?’

  Miles, it seemed, knew a great deal and I sank into my classroom silence as he filled in my backstory, the years we’d studied together at Verona high school, how I looked up to him, how perhaps, Miles speculated, I was a bit in love with him.

  ‘This is great,’ said Ivor, ‘and now I want you both to imagine an earlier conversation, the two of you, before the start of the play, where you talk about love’.

  A pause.

  ‘In your own time.’

  ‘Sorry, Ivor,’ I said, ‘you want us to …’

  ‘Go off script, improvise.’

  ‘As … as these characters?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But using the language of the time?’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Miles.

  ‘Yes, but don’t get hung up on it, Charlie. Keep it loose, it doesn’t have to be historically accurate, it’s more about how you relate to each other. Just … make it up.’

  ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ said Miles, slapping his hands together. ‘Someone forgot their lines in Twelfth Night once and I improvised for, like, a page and a half, in iambics too, and I swear, if you wrote it down, no one would be able to tell the difference—’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I can’t do that, Ivor.’

  ‘Give it a go, nevertheless.’

  The doors to the patio were closed, but if I hurled myself through the glass—

  No time. Miles was on me, embracing me in his big bare arms. ‘Benvolio, how dost thou? I have been looking for thee in all the squares and alleyways of this fair town.’

  ‘Ah, dear Romeo,’ I said, my cheek against his smooth bare chest, ‘I wast … at home. With my parents.’

  ‘Let us not talk of mum and dad but let us talk of love!’

  ‘Ah, love,’ I said. ‘What dost thou think of love, fair Romeo?’

  ‘Thou knowst that I scorn love, all poetry, all song. But thou, Benvolio, art a mystery. Dost thou not have a secret love? One that thou holdst dear? Pray tell, for am I not thy dear, true friend?’

  ‘Great,’ whispered Ivor, ‘this is great!’ and now they were both looking at me as I searched the ceiling, then the carpet, then the ceiling for something to say.

  ‘Ah, love. With love, my experience hath been … both hit and miss … for love is like something … that I can … take or leave. And that, dear friend, is all I have to say.’

  ‘Okay,’ sighed Ivor, ‘let’s remember what we’ve learnt.’

  What I’d learnt was that I was at my best when listening and nodding. Thankfully it was a listening, nodding sort of scene and as the afternoon went on, I began to understand it. Romeo claims to be in love with someone and my response – Benvolio’s response – is to point out that there are plenty more fish in the sea.

  ‘Forget to think of her!’

  ‘O teach me how I should forget to think!’

  And I had to hand it to Miles, he could really handle the ‘O’s, the ‘Ah, me’s and ‘Alas’es, could really sing them out, as he bounced around the room, squatting, sitting astride a chair, improvising business with the curtains or a lampshade. I did my best to keep up. ‘Try moving on the line, Charlie,’ said Ivor, ‘rather than before or after,’ but walking while talking was beyond me, especially holding the script. The other hand, which I was unable to squeeze into the pocket of my jeans, dangled limply from the belt loop like a flirtatious cowboy. Miles, meanwhile, found poses that he would hold for a suspended moment, like a model in a photo shoot. He didn’t act with me but around me, as if I was a coffee table.

  But along with vanity and self-absorption came a conviction that was catching and once we’d ‘got it on its feet’ and ‘kicked it around a little’ I found that I no longer recoiled from his arm around my neck, the punch on the shoulder. Imagine you’re talking to your best friend, Fran had said, and so I did, and soon Ivor was sitting hunched forward in his chair, earnest and engaged, gnawing on a knuckle. Alina joined us too, serious behind crossed arms but not scowling or pinching the bridge of her nose or shaking her head.

  ‘Nice work, guys,’ said Ivor at the end of the day. ‘Great process,’ and I felt an entirely unexpected bloom of pride. Stepping outside, Miles squeezed my shoulder and offered me the magic water. ‘I think we’re on to something.’ I felt another hand on my other shoulder, lightly touching as she passed by. ‘Someone has been doing their homework!’ said Alina, with the bare ghost of a smile, and I knew that I was safe and could stay on, if I chose to.

  And waiting for me on the wall of the rockery garden, kicking at the stones with her heel and grinning, was Fran Fisher, ready to walk home.

  Forget to think of her? O teach me how I should forget to think!

  At the petrol station, I sat behind the till and muttered Shakespeare.

  ‘Madam, an hour before the worshipped sun peered forth the golden window of—’

  A horn sounded on the forecourt, and here was Harper stepping out of his brother’s car, with two other figures in the backseat, slumped low. I stashed the script away and made sure my sword was out of sight. Harper entered and we went into our act.

  ‘My brother has won some money on the scratch cards. Can I please cash them in here please?’

  ‘Certainly! May I see the cards?’

  ‘Yes. Here are the cards.’

  I took the cash from the till. ‘Congratulations!’ I said but he was already walking away. I watched him cross the forecourt and this was where I finally broke character and sprinted round the counter and outside.

  ‘Excuse me! Quick word?’ We stood stiffly by the bags of barbecue charcoal, Harper uncomfortably eyeing the getaway car.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just wondered – how’ve you been?’

  ‘I’ve been all right. I thought you said we were on video?’

  ‘We are, it’s fine, no one watches. It’s just if people drive off without paying. I haven’t seen you since—’

  ‘I came by your house. Your dad said you were out. He said he’d not seen you either.’

  ‘No, I’ve been … was he all right?’

  Harper laughed. ‘I don’t know, he’s your dad. Same as always. We’d better go.’ I heard the rev of the engine, saw his brother tapping his watch, saw it was Lloyd and Fox low in the backseat. I raised my hand but no response.

  ‘So, is Lloyd still pissed off with me?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I’ll come and get the money later.’

  ‘No, don’t do that, it’s late.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ It was n
ot yet nine.

  ‘I’ll give it to you now, but I don’t want to do this again.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m earning good money with Dad; I don’t need it. In fact you can have the lot.’

  ‘No, you take half.’

  ‘No. You need it more than I do.’

  ‘Here? Now?’

  ‘I’ve got it in my hand. I’ll slip it to you, save the bother.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Okay, be careful.’ We shook hands and I felt my fingers curl around the notes, which I tucked straight into my pocket. The handover felt smooth enough, underplayed and discreet, and it was only later, when it became evidence against me, that I thought of the furtive look each way, the glance I gave into the lens of the security camera, the stiff and twisted handshake that had no motivation. Why would the clerk be standing on the forecourt in the first place, shaking hands with a customer he’d not met before?

  When performing on camera, it’s always important to do less.

  Prospects

  The Capulets were playing rounders against the Montagues, Polly for the Capulets, crouching low, the bat held over her shoulder with two hands like an axe-murderer.

  ‘You’re holding it too high, Polly,’ said Miles, about to bowl.

  ‘Miles, I’m sixty-eight years old, don’t tell me how to play rounders, please.’

  ‘But it’s too high, it needs to be down here.’

  ‘Miles, I will send this ball directly at your face.’

  ‘No, not the face!’ shouted Alex.

  ‘Fine. Do it your way.’ The ball left his hand and with a satisfying pok, Polly sent it high into the blue sky as Fran and Colin and Keith left their bases and ran, followed by Polly, sliding home to whoops and cheers.

  George was last in, picking up the bat with clear distaste. ‘Team sports. Fascism in action. The only reason I’m here is to avoid team sports.’

  He didn’t last long, then it was my turn. Having failed at badminton, it now seemed vital to me that Fran think I was extraordinary at rounders, but I could only knock the ball a few metres into the hands of Lucy. The rest of the Montagues fell soon after and then both houses lay sprawled across the lawn in the morning sun.