‘Well … good luck!’
‘Thank you. Thank you.’
And I wanted to change the subject, but had nothing to change it to.
‘So,’ I said.
‘So.’
‘We should go down.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘It’s good to see you.’
‘You too.’
‘Looking so well.’
‘Well, bit tired.’
‘No, I think you look beautiful. I can say that, can’t I?’
‘I don’t know, George is a man of great violence. I think so.’
And here we should have stood and left but instead she lifted my hand, and looked at our interlaced fingers. ‘This is weird.’
‘It is.’
‘Not terrible.’
‘No, but …’
‘I thought about it, about what I felt, about this, and I don’t want to get mawkish or anything,’ she said, ‘but first love, I think it’s like a song, a stupid pop song that you hear and you think, well that is all I will ever want to listen to, it’s got everything, it’s clearly the greatest piece of music ever written, I need nothing else. ’Course we wouldn’t put it on now. We’re too hard and experienced and sophisticated. But when it comes on the radio, well, it’s still a good song. It is. There, isn’t that profound?’
‘Very.’
‘And you are happy, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘Well, so am I! So am I! There you go. We had a happy ending.’
‘So we’re not eloping then?’
‘Well, normally I’d say yes but I’ve got a Caesarean booked and you’re getting married, so …’
‘We’ll leave it then.’
‘Yes. Let’s leave it.’
She tapped her head, just once, against my shoulder, and we looked back to the view, the drizzle in the air caught by the yellow light. Fran shifted on the bench. ‘The rain’s soaking through now, so …’
‘Let’s go down,’ I said, and with a groan and a long exhalation, she stood. At the top of the stairs, we paused. ‘Hold on,’ I said. This would be goodbye, I knew, and so before I could think too much I said the words that had been caught in my throat all night.
‘So what I came for …’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s really corny. Don’t throw up.’
‘I promise nothing.’
‘Well, that was quite a weird time. I wasn’t very happy, I don’t think, when we met. And then I was. I mean, delirious. So I think it’s just – thank you.’
She puffed out her cheeks satirically, but just for a moment. Then she leant back against the doorframe, looked at me a while and smiled and gave a nod of her head.
‘Pleasure,’ she said.
Back at the party, George and I exchanged phone numbers with no expectation of using them. ‘We’ll have you to dinner! With your wife!’ I stood at the edge of a crowd and listened to a man in his late forties, long-haired and plump in a ruffled shirt: Ivor, our director. I’d hoped to see Alina too. I imagined that after twenty years she’d have aged into something grand, fierce and spectacular and I liked to think she’d have remembered me as one of her successes. But she was not around and instead, Ivor caught my eye for just a moment, tried to place me – a face in a photo that he couldn’t recall – then continued with the anecdote. A member of the As You Like It company had uncovered the old pub piano, played a broken chord, and now they began to sing ‘It Was a Lover and His Lass’ all harmonies and fruity vibrato, and before the verse had ended, Helen barrelled across the room and grabbed my elbow.
‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’
‘All right, let me just say goodbye to—’
‘… with a hey and a ho and a hey nonino …’
‘No, now, Charlie, NOW!’
I grabbed my coat and looked for Fran and her family, but it seemed that they’d already gone.
Curtain Call
Last year, my father died. The event that had preoccupied me for so much of my childhood and teenage years finally took place, though thankfully in different circumstances to those I’d once imagined so vividly. A heart attack, almost instant I was told, though I’m not sure that even a quick death is ever quick enough. Who knows?
He was not yet sixty and although it would be comforting to tell a story of complete recovery, depression came and went through all of his last twenty years. But I like to think that the happier times were more frequent and that I – we – got better at anticipating and managing the lows. Largely this was down to his wife, his second wife, Maureen, whom he’d met at work. Serious, teetotal, church-going, Maureen was a kind of negative image of Mum, and I should confess that in my London twenties, I found the atmosphere in their bungalow – a bungalow! – almost unbearably dull and soporific, and so I rarely came to visit and never to stay. The role of surly stepson was custom made for me at that time. This was marriage as early retirement and I could never bear more than an hour or two in the neat, over-heated living room. Maureen was devoted to my father and devotion is dull to be around, but I know they also laughed a great deal and went for walking holidays, ticking off the South Downs Way, Hadrian’s Wall, the South West Coast Path like super-extended delivery rounds. Maureen even developed an interest in jazz, a taste that I could never acquire myself, though I still try from time to time, and as I got older I began to appreciate the relative happiness and stability she brought to Dad’s later life. My father and I didn’t have much in common except a tendency towards gloomy introspection and a sentimental and unspoken belief in love as a remedy, if not a comprehensive cure. The flip side of this for my father was a fear of being lonely, unloved or, worst of all, unlovable but after his second marriage this fear faded away and I like to think that in the years before his heart stopped, suddenly, halfway through his morning round, he was more content than he’d ever been. I like to think that.
Predictably, his death was the catalyst for an excavation of the past, often fraught and painful, results outlined above. But when I thought of my father, it was always that summer I returned to. He was the same age as I am now, and those months seemed to contain both the best and worst of all that passed between us.
One scene is missing, though: the meeting of my father and Fran Fisher.
From the side of the stage I watched them speaking after the final performance, Fran laughing at something my father had said, her hand on his forearm, then dipping her head, ducking almost, at what I imagined was praise. I watched them for some time, pleased that they were getting on so well. I knew that he would love her and hoped that she would see something in him that had yet to rise to the surface in his son: an integrity perhaps, a kindness.
And so I watched. To have joined them would have risked spoiling things, and besides, I’d presumed, with all the hope I’d had in that moment, that there’d be endless opportunities to spend time with them, the two most important people in my life at that point. They spoke once or twice on the phone but never again in person, and I’m startled to realise in this moment that I won’t see either of them again.
Never mind.
Never mind.
This is a love story, though now that it’s over it occurs to me that it’s actually four or five, perhaps more: familial and paternal love; the slow-burning, reviving love of friends; the brief, blinding explosion of first love that can only be looked at directly once it has burnt out. A single word can only carry so many meanings, and maybe there ought to be different words for something so varied and weighty. For the moment, this one word will have to bear all of the above, and married love too.
My wife. Will I ever get used to saying that? When I returned from the party, I found Niamh asleep on the sofa, the reading lamp so close to her head that the room smelt of singed hair. I twisted the light away and she started awake.
‘What? Hello.’
‘It smells of burnt hair in here.’
‘Hm? Yes, that’s my new scent. For the wedding. Cheveu
x Brûlés.’
‘I like it.’
She yawned and felt her scalp. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nine forty-five.’
‘Wild man. Where is she then?’
‘She’s waiting in the car downstairs.’
‘Is that right?’
‘I just came up to throw a few things in a bag.’
‘Our car.’
‘Yes, we’re taking the car.’
‘Seems harsh. Can I keep the TV?’
‘Won’t it remind you of me?’
‘Not especially. Who’s going to call the caterers?’
‘Leave it ’til tomorrow.’ I kissed her. ‘Can I sit down?’ Niamh shifted, and we sat with our heads resting against each other.
‘It’s great that we can laugh about these things, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘The thing is, Niamh, you can laugh about these things.’
‘Can I?’
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Good.’
‘Let’s go to bed.’
We didn’t move. ‘But how was she?’
‘Older.’
‘There’s surprising.’
‘She was nice. Everyone was. She was happy.’
‘You too?’
‘And me too.’
‘Well, there you go,’ she said. ‘That’s all you can hope for, isn’t it? That’s what you want. And now you know.’
And now I know.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are owed to my early readers, Damian Barr, Hannah MacDonald, Roanna Benn and Michael McCoy, for their support, encouragement and good judgement. I am endlessly grateful to Jonny Geller, Kate Cooper, Catherine Cho and all the team at Curtis Brown.
At Hodder and Stoughton, Nick Sayers continues to be the best possible editor, and I’d also like to thank Amber Burlinson, Cicely Aspinall, Lucy Hale, Carolyn Mays, Jamie Hodder-Williams, Alasdair Oliver, Susan Spratt, Jacqui Lewis, Alice Morley and that four-time veteran of author neuroses, Emma Knight.
Finally, I would like to thank Bruno Wang for his generosity, Emmanuel Kwesi Quayson, Karen Fishwick – a brilliant Juliet – for her insights and Ayse Tashkiran for putting us in touch. I’d also like to acknowledge a debt, in mood and tone, to the Pulp song, David’s Last Summer.
Finally, as always, love and gratitude are due to Hannah Weaver for her humour, patience and support.
Read more by David Nicholls
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Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare
Act I, Scene IV
MERCUTIO: O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spider’s web;
Her collars, of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams;
Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as ’a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.
This is she—
Act I, Scene V
Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this,
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
Romeo: Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.
Kisses her.
Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Romeo: Sin from my lips? O, trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
Kisses her again.
Juliet: You kiss by th’book.
Act III, Scene II
Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaways’ eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy’d. So tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not w
ear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.
David Nicholls is the bestselling author of Us, One Day, The Understudy and Starter for Ten. His novels have sold over eight million copies worldwide and are published in forty languages.
David trained as an actor before making the switch to writing. He is an award-winning screenwriter, with TV credits including the third series of Cold Feet, a much-praised modern version of Much Ado About Nothing, The 7.39 and an adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. David wrote the screenplays for Great Expectations (2012) and Far from the Madding Crowd (2015, starring Carey Mulligan). He recently won a BAFTA for Patrick Melrose, his adaptation of the novels by Edward St Aubyn, which also won him an Emmy nomination.
His bestselling first novel, Starter for Ten, was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club in 2004, and in 2006 David went on to write the screenplay of the film version.
His third novel, One Day, was published in 2009 to extraordinary critical acclaim, and stayed in the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list for ten weeks on publication. One Day won the 2010 Galaxy Book of the Year Award.
David’s fourth novel, Us, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014 and was another no. 1 Sunday Times bestseller. In the same year he was named Author of the Year at the National Book Awards.
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