Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  At lunch, I walked with George. ‘So I hear congratulations are in order,’ he said.

  ‘Christ, George, how does everyone know this stuff?’

  ‘Word gets around. People say they do plays for the ideas and the art, but it’s all about the sex. The last-night party, it’s basically an orgy. That’s the hope anyway.’

  ‘Well, it’s nothing yet. It’s probably a, just … you know …’

  ‘A mere summer’s fancy.’

  ‘I was going to say “snog”. It’s just a snog at a party. We’ll see.’

  ‘Well, just so you know, I don’t mind. Well, I do mind, but I’m not going to get weird about it and follow you both home. I’m … happy for you.’

  ‘Thanks, George.’

  ‘Furious too.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘But don’t say anything, will you? To her, about me. I do have some pride.’

  I said that I understood.

  We worked hard – no time for lunchtime meetings now – and at last, at the end of the long day, we found each other at the spot where the bikes lay on top of each other, pedals in spokes, brake cables around handlebars. ‘Look, we’re all tangled up,’ she said and I thought, well, this is just too much.

  ‘I thought we could go somewhere, me and you. Run our lines,’ I said, and we began to push our bikes, but now Helen and Alex were running towards us.

  ‘The gang’s all here!’ said Helen.

  ‘How are you two feeling?’ said Alex. ‘Any comedown, any crash?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ said Fran.

  ‘Bit sore,’ I said.

  ‘I bet you are,’ said Alex.

  ‘Alex …’ said Fran.

  ‘So where are we all going now?’ said Helen. ‘The four of us.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Fran, ‘Charlie and me are going to run some lines,’ and their laughter rang out through the treetops.

  ‘“Run some lines”. Well, I’ve never heard it called that before—’

  ‘Grow up, Alex.’

  ‘No, I think it’s a great idea. Helen and I will come with you.’

  ‘Sorry, we’ve got bikes,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll jog alongside!’ said Alex. ‘Take us with you!’

  ‘So childish. Charlie, get on your bike.’

  ‘But who’s going to help me run my lines?’ said Alex.

  ‘We’re coming with you!’ said Helen.

  ‘We’re going now,’ shouted Fran. ‘Bye!’

  ‘See you tomorrow!’ I shouted, standing high on the pedals.

  ‘But I want to run my lines!’

  ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’

  Running the Lines

  And so for the next two weeks, we’d head off in the evenings and run our lines.

  Nothing had ever looked cooler to me than Fran Fisher on a drop-handled Italian racing bike, and as much as we could we’d cycle side by side, the sun fluttering through the trees like light through an old projector, sometimes only making it a short distance before we’d pull over and, still kissing, stumble and stagger off our bikes. We ran our lines in woods and hedgerows and, in the absence of traditional haystacks, in the shadow of black-plastic-wrapped cylinders of straw, the new stubble digging into our backs like a bed of nails. One night Fran brought red wine stolen from her parents, pushing the cork into the bottle with a biro, the contents jammy and as warm as tea after a day in the sun. We took it in turns to swig the stuff, then, woozy and sticky-mouthed and struggling not to laugh, Fran took a mouthful and passed it into my mouth. ‘Sensual? Or was that just gross?’ she said as a large part of it dribbled down my neck.

  Memories of the previous evening and the prospect of the next sustained me through the long, increasingly urgent rehearsals. We’d watch scenes and what we saw was … not good, but better than the grandstanding and posturing of the early days, the weird vocal mannerisms fading away, the story and characters rising up through the murk. People looked at each other now, touched each other without flinching, urged each other on. I’d never played in an orchestra and never would, but imagined that this was what it was like to learn a long piece, to anticipate the bits you liked, find something to distract you through the dull stretches, to play your part with the intention of making the whole better, even if no one in the audience would notice. Embarrassment, I realised, was more embarrassing than making an effort, and so I did my best, without quite noticing the moment I became a member of the company, both in my own mind and their eyes. Why would I not want to be part of something that Fran loved?

  And though it’s hard to imagine a less objective critic, I became more and more convinced that she was the greatest actor there had ever been. I loved the way her eyes and hands would track an idea as if following a bird that has flown into a room, and I loved her stillness, the absolute control and confidence that what she said mattered. I loved how she would make the words sound new, then make them new again the next time through, and I’d lean forward in my chair and watch, never for a moment feeling jealous or unsure but only proud at what she could do, proud and a little amazed that we were together.

  But during the day we never touched and only spoke in a pointedly platonic way and there was further agony in sticking to this rule, like holding in a breath, only released in the moment we could wave goodbye to the others and hurtle away along empty lanes, searching for somewhere new and secret to ‘run the lines’. Sometimes in guilt or panic, we would even actually run the lines, with me as her slow-witted temporary Romeo, talking about saints and lips and prayers.

  ‘Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?’ I said.

  ‘Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer,’ said Fran.

  ‘O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray: grant thou lest faith turn to despair.’

  ‘Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.’

  ‘Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.’

  ‘Then the stage directions say “he kisses her”.’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have to do that. We’re just running lines.’

  ‘I bet Miles does it.’

  ‘He does, but we have a contract. Strict no-tongues clause.’

  ‘Make sure he sticks to it.’

  ‘Oh I will,’ she said, and kissed me. ‘But do you get it?’

  ‘He’s trying to convince her that a kiss is the same as a prayer.’

  ‘That old line.’

  ‘And she’s being all saintly.’

  ‘Or pretending to be. She wouldn’t let him kiss her if she didn’t want him to. I think she wants it more, if anything. That’s the extent of my interpretation of the role.’

  ‘Juliet’s up for it.’

  ‘Really up for it,’ she said, and we kissed again. ‘But do you get the shape of the thing?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The lines. It’s a sonnet. Fourteen lines, ending with a couplet.’

  I counted them up. ‘I didn’t get that. So …’

  ‘So it’s like they meet and start talking in verse – not just finishing each other’s sentences, but perfect rhyme and sonnet form. The final couplet is the kiss. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?’

  I could see that it was, but was aware of being taught again. Miles, I knew, would recognise sonnet form and these reminders of my ignorance troubled me more than the kiss. I didn’t mind being taught if I could teach her something in return. But what? She even smoked better than me.

  ‘Shall we go again? From the top.’

  Yet even in the rat-a-tat repetition of learning by rote I loved to listen to her, and though I’m not sure that I’d have admitted it, I also began to love the language, looking forward to passages in the same way that I looked forward to a key change or crescendo in a song: not always for the meaning – which still often escaped me – but for reasons that were in themselves musical, a change in pitch or pace or key, a rhythm. My bounty is as boundless as the sea! The mask of night is on my face! Cut him out in little stars!
I’d listen all day and then again each night as we ran lines. My mind was more impressionable then and even now I could recite great long passages. I can’t imagine the circumstances in which that might happen, but they’re there, like initials scratched into drying cement. She was also the first person to tell me I was funny, the greatest praise I’d ever had because it was the praise that I’d most wanted. Not in a stand-up comedy way but with friends, small groups, which is where it mattered.

  We’d try to get back to Fran’s house before it got dark, but the lanes were unlit and too treacherous to cycle down and so we’d walk. This was the second half of August, and I’d become aware of the accelerated shortening of the days, and fearful and resentful of it, as if our summer together was a coastline succumbing to the waves. The motion of the sun is but the thief of lovers’ time and, like autumn waves, wears down the season’s fragile shore; it was contagious, poetry. This kind of stuff occurred to me more often now, the words, the ideas and feelings all tangled up, and though I had the good sense not to say it out loud, I wondered if I should write it down.

  And perhaps the play was right in this respect too: that being in love might change not just how you felt, but the way you thought and spoke. Not sonnet form exactly, but as darkness came on, we’d talk in a different way; small confessions, revelations, the formation of little private jokes. We already knew each other; now the project was to really know each other. Such transparency involved a fair amount of deception, at least by omission; she’d have run a mile from the real real-me, and any darkness I confessed had to be the right kind of darkness. I did not, for instance, tell her I was a thief.

  But I did tell her all that I was prepared to say about the break-up of my family, my father’s breakdown and what it was like to live with this. For perhaps the first time, I trusted someone entirely. There was nothing relaxed about our conversation but even so I was aware that this was a new way of talking, free of prepared questions and answers. It was both adult and a plausible impersonation of ‘adult’, selfconsciously earnest, effortfully profound. In short, we were ridiculous but a part of us knew we were ridiculous and didn’t care, and I think now of an illustration I’d once seen in a children’s book, Maurice Sendak I think, of children dressed in grown-up clothing, hats falling off the backs of their heads, long sleeves hanging empty.

  At her house, we’d hear the television through the open window and kiss goodbye for some time in the shelter of the high hedge. She’d invite me in to meet her parents but I’d always say no. The next day we’d rehearse again and occasionally I’d take a night off from running lines to work my resentful shift in the petrol station, still stealing scratch cards but in moderation. Perhaps I’d use the money for some kind of gift – jewellery from Argos in Woking, an eat-in dinner at the Taj Mahal.

  Then, on the Thursday evening of the second week of running lines, she asked if I minded going a little further. ‘I’ve consulted a map,’ she said.

  River

  ‘Look – Ordnance Survey. Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, you see. I think we have time,’ and she took the edges of the blue cotton dress she wore that day, bunched and tucked it into the elastic of her underwear, and we set off, laboriously ascending the brow of the hill behind the Manor then freewheeling into an unfamiliar valley, Fran leading the way, the map flapping and cracking on her handlebars, a dark patch of sweat spreading on her back. We coasted down a long, straight avenue of poplar trees like something from a French film and, at the far end, slowed to a halt and paused while she peered at the map again – ‘What happened to your Duke of Edinburgh Award?’ ‘I gave up after Bronze. This way!’ – then struck off across a meadow, walking single file along an overgrown footpath at the edge of a field, pushing past brambles dotted with crimson unripened berries. There were scratches on our arms and legs but ‘It’ll be worth it, I promise you.’ Sure enough, a sound was growing, a long, husky sigh, until suddenly we stepped out onto a low bank, a beach with black sand at the edge of a bend in a great dark river. The air trapped beneath the canopy of trees was hazy with midges, hot and still with a metallic smell like the air before a storm, and wagtails strutted at the water’s edge, swallows and martins dabbing at the surface.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Beautiful,’ I said and wondered if I ought to kiss her. But already she had dropped her bicycle, plucked off her trainers and, still walking, grabbed the hem of her dress and peeled it from her damp back and over her head. Eyes fixed forward, she unhooked her bra and at the water’s edge, pulled down and stepped carefully out of her underwear. With a gasp, she took two, three long steps into the water and stood there for a moment, one hand at the small of her back, the other arm across her breasts. Then both arms were above her head and she fell forward, yelped at the cold and was gone, silently and entirely, just a white shape against the green, carried downstream with the current. In all of this, I’d not spoken and perhaps not breathed and now I could only say, ‘Oh, God,’ before she resurfaced again, some way downstream, squinting and pinching her nose.

  ‘Why aren’t you in yet?’

  ‘I’m really sorry, I don’t have my trunks with me.’

  ‘“Trunks!”’ She laughed. ‘Well, you can’t ride a bike in wet underpants, you’ll chafe! I’ll count to ten.’ In a spirit of discretion, she turned her back and disappeared beneath the water and I took the moment to quickly pull off my clothes. The pebbles were agony underfoot as I ran bow-legged into the river, stumbling and spinning with a huge splash and gasping at the slap of the cold water that caused my genitals to contract like a snail into its shell. You’ll warm up, I told myself and half swam, half stumbled to the deepest part, the river-bed, here peaty and black-brown with a half-pleasant vegetable smell. The current carried me through patches of warm, then cold, then warm water down to where Fran now stood, in a sunlit patch at the far bank, crouching so that her chin touched the water, her shoulders brown, her breasts white triangles beneath the surface. She caught me as I floated past, tangling together, and we kissed, tasting the river water on her lips and mouth, and I pulled her towards me so that our legs were interlocked, and we wriggled our toes into the silk of the mud for anchorage and stayed like this until the water felt warm between us and our fingers pruned, until Fran pulled her feet from the mud, lifted herself and locked her legs around my hips.

  But this was too much and, gasping, she pushed herself away suddenly, laughing then turning and swimming back upstream. I watched her leave the water, crouching, clutching her clothes to her body and disappearing up the bank and into the field above. I stood for a moment, then, like a drunk trying to sober up, submerged myself completely. I clambered out, untangled my clothes, dressed and followed.

  I found her lying in the long grass, her arms out to the side, her underwear bunched in her left hand, her dress still wet and clinging to her like seaweed on a rock. She didn’t look at me as I approached and I had a notion that I’d offended her – she was still breathing deeply, as if she’d been crying – but she patted the spot at her side and I joined her, holding hands, drying out as best we could in the low, tired sun.

  After some time had passed, she turned on her side and kissed me lightly. ‘That thing we almost did. The sex thing.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it and I want to wait.’

  ‘Okay. Until when?’

  ‘Until you’re twenty-one.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘Or the weekend.’

  ‘This weekend?’

  ‘I thought so.’ She started to laugh and shifted onto her side. ‘Your face. Twenty-one?!’

  ‘Yes, that was really funny.’

  ‘But the weekend, you can manage?’

  ‘Me and you?’

  ‘I think that was implied.’

  ‘This weekend?’

  ‘Want to look at your diary?’

  ‘No, no, I’m good.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I mean, I’ll have
to check the Radio Times.’

  ‘See what’s on?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘That’s if you want to do it with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to take anything for granted.’

  ‘Well, I was saving it for someone I liked …’

  ‘But in the meantime? As a stop-gap?’

  ‘It’s more or less the only thing I think about.’

  She laughed. ‘I mean what we do now, the … fooling around, that’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘We’d just be taking it to—’

  ‘—the next stage.’

  ‘Well, then it’s fixed,’ she said. ‘Think of it as the ultimate line-run.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good. It’s on.’ She kissed me and lay back down. ‘Anyway, sex underwater doesn’t work. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. You’d be fine but I’m the one who’d get frogspawn and pondweed up there.’

  ‘Sticklebacks.’

  ‘Pond skaters. Fanny like a classroom aquarium. I don’t want to miss my period then find out I’m going to have a perch. Also, we’d have needed a condom.’

  I had one in my wallet, one of a set of three – a lifetime’s supply, I’d thought – that I’d purchased, heart racing, in the toilets of the golf club where Mum worked. I’d selected ‘ribbed’, a powerful word, like the walls of a log cabin or the tyres of a monster truck. If they’d sold ‘corrugated’ I’d have bought those. Instead, I was alarmed at the gossamer flimsiness of the thing. To reassure myself, the first had been squandered on what I thought of as a ‘dry run’; the second, ‘the spare tyre’, was stashed in the cardboard sleeve of the Stone Roses’ second LP, because I knew no one would ever look there. The third of the trilogy I’d take with me on evenings that had seemed ripe with promise – trips to the funfair for some reason, or to parties in Harper’s den. I carried it now, the ring showing through the burnished wrapper like a brass rubbing. We might have used that in the river, but it would have meant swimming to shore to get it, walking back across the pebbles and perhaps holding it in my mouth as I swam back like a dog with a tennis ball. No, it was not the right time. It would have made a good story, I suppose, to have done it for the first time in the middle of a moving river, but I was glad we’d stopped because—