Pumpkin Pie

by Jean Ure

  The thought of meeting boys who were both creative and sensitive and gorgeous seemed almost too good to be true.

  “Do they really exist?” I said.

  “Of course they do!” said Saffy. She said that you had to be all of those things if you wanted to be an actor. You couldn’t have actors that were goofy or geeky or just plain boring.

  “Or even just plain,” I said. And then immediately thought of at least a dozen that were all of those things. I reeled off a list to Saffy.

  “What about that one that looks like a frog? That one that was on the other day. And that one that’s all drippy, the one in Scene Stealing, that you said you couldn’t stand. You said it was insulting they ever let him on the screen. And that other one, that Jason person, the one in—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” said Saffy. “But there’s far more who are gorgeous. I mean—” She gave this little nervous trill. Nervous because she knew perfectly well she was being self-indulgent. “Look at Brad!”

  By Brad she meant Brad Pitt. (Famous American movie star, in case anyone has been hiding in a hole for the past ten years.) Don’t ask me what Brad Pitt had to do with it. Just don’t ask. Saffy brings Brad Pitt into everything. She can’t help it, poor dear, she is infatuated. I somewhat sternly pointed out (being cruel to be kind) that Brad Pitt is not exactly a boy, in fact he is probably old enough to be her grandfather. Well, father. I might just as well not have bothered! Saffy simply smiled this soppy smile and loftily informed me that she preferred “the mature man”.

  “Well, you’re not very likely to meet any mature men at drama classes,” I said. “Not when they’re advertised for 12 to 16 year olds!”

  “That’s all right,” said Saffy, still in these lofty tones. “If I can’t have Brad—”

  “Which you can’t,” I said.

  “I know I can’t!” snapped Saffy. “I just said that, didn’t I? He’s married!”

  “On the other hand,” I said, trying to be helpful, “he’s bound to get divorced. Movie stars always do. If you wait around long enough—”

  “Oh!” She clasped her hands. “Do you think so?” Heavens! She was taking me seriously. Her cheeks had now turned bright pink.

  “Well, no,” I said. “I don’t, actually. By the time you’re old enough, he’ll be practically decrepit.”

  Her face fell, and I immediately felt that I had been mean, turning her daydreams into a joke. It’s not kind to trample on people’s daydreams. Specially not when it’s your best friend. But Saffy is actually quite realistic and never stays crushed for long. She is a whole lot tougher than she looks!

  “Well, anyway,” she said, “as I was saying, if I can’t have Brad I’ll make do with someone else. Just in the mean time. To practise on.”

  “While you’re waiting,” I said.

  “Yes.” She giggled. “As long as they’re not geeky!”

  “Or swamp creatures.”

  “Or aliens.”

  But they wouldn’t be. She promised me! They would be creative and sensitive and hunky. She said we must enrol straight away.

  “We’ve already missed the first two weeks of term. They’ll all be taken!”

  I said, “Who will?”

  “All the gorgeous guys!”

  “Oh. Right!” An idea suddenly struck me. If all the guys were going to be gorgeous, wouldn’t all the girls be gorgeous, too? I had visions of finding myself among a dozen different versions of Petal. What a nightmare!

  I put this to Saffy, but she reassured me. She said that loads of quite ordinary-looking girls (such as for instance her and me) fancied themselves as actresses, but the only boys who went to drama classes were the creative, sensitive, and divinely beautiful ones.

  “If they’re not creative and sensitive they go and play with their computers. And if they are creative and sensitive, but not very beautiful—”

  I waited.

  “They go and do something else,” said Saffy.

  “Like what?” I said.

  “Oh! I don’t know.” She waved a hand. Saffy can never be bothered with mere detail. She is quite an impatient sort of person. “Probably go and write poetry, or something.”

  I thought about the boys in our class. Writing poetry was not an activity I associated with any of them. Ethan Cole had once written a limerick that started “There was a young girl called Jan”, but none of it had scanned and it hadn’t made any sort of sense and what was more it had been downright rude. That was the only sort of poetry that the boys in our class understood. How could you have a class with fourteen boys and every single one an alien?

  I said to Saffy that if I could meet a boy that wrote poetry I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t beautiful, just the fact that he wrote poetry would be enough, but Saffy told me that that made me sound desperate.

  “Why settle for a creative geek when you could have a creative hunk? Ask your mum and dad as soon as you get home. Tell them your entire future is at stake! You don’t have to mention boys. Just say that having drama classes will give you poise and – and confidence and – and will be good for your self-esteem.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I asked Dad the minute he got back from picking up Pip from school. I followed him round the kitchen as he chopped and sliced and tossed things into pans.

  “Dad,” I said.

  “Yes? Out of the way, there’s a good girl!”

  I hastily skipped round the other side of the table. Dad hates to be crowded when he’s in the kitchen. Mum says he’s a bit of a prima donna.

  “Do you think I could go to acting classes?” I said.

  Dad said, “What sort of acting classes? Hand me the salt, would you?”

  “Acting classes,” I said. “Drama. At a drama school.”

  “Pepper!”

  “It would give me poise,” I said.

  “Poise, eh? Taste this!” Dad thrust a spoon in my face. “How is it? Not too hot?”

  “It’s scrummy,” I said. “The thing is, if I went to acting classes—”

  “Bit more salt, I reckon.”

  “It would give me confidence, Dad!”

  “Didn’t know you lacked it,” said Dad.

  “I do,” I said. “That’s why I want to go. So could I, Dad? Please?”

  “It’s not up to me,” said Dad. “Ask your mum.”

  I should have known! It’s what he always says. Dad and me are really great mates, and he is wonderful for having cuddles with, but whenever it’s anything serious he always, always says ask your mum. It’s like Mum is the career woman, she is the big breadwinner, so she has to make all the decisions.

  Well, of course, Mum didn’t get in till late, and as usual she was worn to a frazzle and just wanted to go and soak in the bath.

  “Darling, I’m exhausted!” she said. “It’s been the most ghastly day. Let’s talk at the weekend. We’ll sit down and have a long chat, I promise.”

  “But, Mum,” I said, “I need to talk now.” Saffy would be cross if I didn’t have an answer for her. She wanted us to be enrolled by the weekend. “All it is,” I said, “I just want to know if I could go to drama classes.”

  It is easy to see how Mum has got ahead in business. In spite of being exhausted, she immediately wanted all the details, such as where, and who with, and how much. Fortunately Saffy can be quite efficient when she puts her mind to it. She had told me where to find the advert in the Yellow Pages, plus she had written down all the things that Mum would want to know.

  “It’s right near where Saffy lives,” I said. “I could go back with her after school on Fridays, and I thought perhaps you could come and pick me up afterwards. Maybe. I mean, if you weren’t too busy. If you didn’t have to work late. And then on Saturdays—”

  “We could manage Saturdays between us,” said Mum. “If you’ve really set your heart on it.”

  One of the best things about my mum is, when you do get to talk to her she doesn’t keep you on tenterhooks while she hums and hahs a
nd thinks things over. She makes up her mind right there and then. It’s something I really like about her. Especially when she makes up her mind the way I want her to! Though considering Pip has his own computer and about nine million computer games, and Petal has her own TV and her own CD player, and I don’t have any of these things (mainly because I don’t particularly want them) Mum probably thought that a few drama classes weren’t so very much to ask. She is quite fair, on the whole, except for spoiling Pip rotten on account of him being the youngest. And of course a boy. I really do think boys get treated better than girls! Petal doesn’t necessarily agree. She says that if Mum spoils Pip, then Dad spoils me. But he only spoils me with food. He’d spoil Petal with food if she’d let him, but she won’t, so she only has herself to blame.

  Anyway, Mum said that on Friday she would leave work early and come with me so that I could get myself enrolled. When she said that, I just nearly burst at the seams! I thought that for Mum to actually come with me was worth far more than if she’d bought me a dozen computers or TV sets. Mum works so hard and such long hours, she almost never gets to do anything with us. I couldn’t resist a bit of boasting, on the phone to Saffy.

  “Mum is going to come with me,” I said.

  “Yes, well, she’d have to,” said Saffy. “Mine’s coming, too. You have to have your parents’ permission.” I couldn’t really expect Saffy to understand how momentous it was, Mum leaving work early just for me. Saffy’s mum only works part-time, and then all she does is answer someone’s telephone. She’s not high-powered like my mum! She is very nice, though. The sort of mum you read about in books. The sort that cooks and sews and all that stuff. Kind of… old-fashioned. Though I don’t think Saffy sees it that way. She thinks it’s quite normal to have a mum who’s there in the morning when she leaves for school and there again in the afternoon when she gets back. She once told me that she found it a bit peculiar, me having a dad who stayed home to look after us.

  “I wouldn’t like that,” she said.

  When I asked her why not she couldn’t really explain except to say that it wasn’t natural. I said, “What do you mean, not natural?” Sounding, probably, a bit defensive. I mean, this was my mum and dad we were talking about! So then she wittered on about cavemen. How it was the cavemen who went out and clubbed animals to death and dragged their carcasses back, while the cavewomen stayed in their caves doing the dusting and sweeping and making up beds.

  She has some very odd ideas! That was back in the Stone Age. Does she think we haven’t progressed?

  As well as having odd ideas, I have to admit that Saffy does also have some good ones. Such as her brilliant plan for us to meet boys! As we got nearer to Friday, I found that I was growing quite excited. Partly it was the prospect of the gorgeous guys, but partly it was this feeling that I might be discovered. As a star, I mean! In spite of not being as show-offy as some people I could name, I have always had this secret belief that I could act far better than, for instance, an up-front in-your-face kind of person such as Dani Morris, who you can just bet your life will always be chosen for lead parts. I have simmered for years about Saffy being an angel and me not being anything. Even if I did have chicken pox and picked my spots. It wasn’t as bad as all that! And anyway, what about make-up?

  In case anyone is thinking ho, ho, you can’t have plump angels, I would just beg to differ. I have seen plump angels! You only have to look at old paintings. There are loads of them. Plump angels, I mean. I would say that in those days you had more plump angels than you had thin ones. But when did you ever see an angel with red hair? I think that is a bit more to the point!

  Not that I have anything against red hair, and certainly nothing against Saffy. It was just all this simmering that I’d been doing. Now at last I was coming to the boil! I saw myself on stage, acting a scene with one of the gorgeous guys. Holding hands… kissing. All the other gorge guys, who up until that point would not have looked twice at me, would suddenly be fancying me like crazy, thinking this girl is magnetic, this girl is just so-o-o sexy! And all the rest of them, all those cool kids that would have sneered when they first saw me – oh, she is no competition! She is a nobody – they would be, like, gobsmacked, wondering how come they could have got it so wrong. Even Saffy would be sitting there with her eyes on stalks. That’s my friend Jenny? Jenny that I’ve known since Infants? That wasn’t even cast as an angel?

  Way to go!

  The drama classes were held every Friday after school and every Saturday afternoon. Four hours a week! It sounds like a lot, but when you are doing something you enjoy it is truly amazing how quickly time passes. As opposed to how s-l-o-w-l-y it passes when it is something you positively loathe, such as maths, for example. Well, in my case when it is maths. I dare say there are some people, with the right sort of brains, that derive great pleasure from the subject.

  Possibly not everyone would think it such fun to get up in front of other people and act out your deepest emotions, or do things which make you look foolish, but it is far more fun, to my way of thinking, than right-angled triangles or stupid problems about men filling baths with water. I was so pleased that Saffy had made us enrol! Why hadn’t I thought of it? Saffy only wanted to meet boys; the acting bit was just an excuse. She didn’t really care whether she was any good or not. I was the one with serious ambitions!

  To be honest, I thought at first that I was going to be disappointed. It wasn’t a bit how I’d expected it to be! I’d pictured a real school with a proper theatre and a dance studio, but all it was, was this shabby old house at the end of Saffy’s road. The paintwork was all peeling, and the window sills were crumbling. Outside there was a sign that said AMBROSE ACADEMY in faded blue letters. The lady who ran it, Mrs Ambrose, was pretty faded, too. She had long white hair done in plaits on top of her head and looked even older than my grans.

  I stared in dismay as me and Mum walked through the door that first Friday. I didn’t mean to be rude, but how could this decrepit person be a drama teacher? I remember that I looked at Saffy and pulled a face, but Saffy just mouthed the one word: boys! It was all she cared about.

  Mum obviously wasn’t too impressed because when she came to fetch me, later that evening, she said, “Pumpkin, I’m sure there must be better places than this! Why don’t we have a look round?”

  I shrieked, “Mum, no!”

  After only two hours, I was hooked. In spite of being so ancient, and having white hair, Mrs Ambrose was a true inspiration. She had this really deep voice, very commanding, and when she moved about the room it was like she was a ship on the sea, ploughing through the waves. She was strict, too! She didn’t make you take auditions because she said that “drama is for everyone,” but she did expect you to work. She said, “Some of you may go on to become professionals. Some of you are just here for fun. But even fun has to be taken seriously! Work hard and play hard and we can all enjoy ourselves.” I think it came as a bit of a shock to Saffy, who’d probably imagined she was just going to slouch around ogling boys.

  For the first half hour we did warm-ups. Physical ones, and ones for the voice.

  Ay ee oo ah oo ee ay

  MmmmmmmAhmmmmmmEemmmmmmEeeeeee

  Sproo sprow spraw sprah spray spree

  Saffy said afterwards that she found it a bit boring. I didn’t! Mrs Ambrose said that I had a good strong voice and good breath control, and I could feel myself glowing. It is nice to be good at things! Saffy, on the other hand, was told that her voice was too tight and too squeaky and that she needed to loosen up, and she was given some special voice exercises to help her. I could see that Saffy wasn’t too pleased, but as I pointed out to her, when she was moaning on about it, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

  “Meaning what?” said Saffy.

  “Meaning,” I said, “that if you want to meet boys you’ve got to work at it. You,” I reminded her, “were the one that said so!”

  “Huh!” said Saffy. And then, in pleading tones, she said, “
I haven’t really got a squeaky voice, have I?”

  What could I say? Mrs Ambrose spoke the truth!

  “This is so humiliating,” wailed Saffy.

  To comfort her, I said that it wasn’t nearly so humiliating as turning right when you should have turned left, which was what happened to me while we were doing our warm-ups. I crashed slap, bang into this girl next to me. She gave me such a glare! I have never been the athletic type, which was what made it so pathetic when I tried to join in with the sporty set. Mrs Ambrose said that I must work on my co-ordination, and the girl I crashed into muttered, “Yeah, and work on something else, as well!” eyeing me sourly as she did so. I wasn’t sure what she meant by this cryptic remark, so I decided to ignore it. I’d already said that I was sorry. What more did she want?

  Everyone except me and Saffy was wearing black tights and black sweats, with Ambrose Academy printed on them. It was a sort of unofficial uniform, and I was already looking forward to wearing it on Saturday. Black is so flattering to the fuller figure. Saffy doesn’t have a fuller figure, in fact she doesn’t really have a figure at all, but she was looking forward to it because she thinks it is a mature sort of colour. Saffy is really anxious to be mature! (In case she happens to bump into Brad while he is between wives, I guess.)

  After we’d finished voice exercises we all settled down to work on this soap that we were creating. The title, which was Sob Story, had already been decided on before me and Saffy enrolled. It was about three girls who were trying to make it as an all-girl band. One of the boys was their manager, and another was a record producer, and one was a DJ. All the rest were friends and neighbours. Saffy and me had to invent characters for ourselves. Saffy decided that she would be “someone from America”.

  “Doing what?” said the girl I’d crashed into.

  “Just visiting,” said Saffy.