Just a few…
“Yeah?”
“There’s a lot I need to get in order.”
“So, you’re not off abroad again?”
I shrug. “There might be another tour in autumn, I dunno.”
“You should do what makes you happy.”
“So should you.”
I lean in, intending to kiss her goodnight on the cheek, but she turns her mouth and we kiss, sort of. Brush lips. Then, unmistakably, she pushes her mouth to mine with all intent to make it a proper kiss and I’m so shocked, I can’t even move. I pull away, my mouth tingling and my whole being rocked. The breaking apart of our mouths even sounds loud. I look away, covering my mouth with a hand so she doesn’t see my lips are burning, aching… itching.
“Why did you do that?” I demand.
“What? Don’t you want it, Theo?”
What should I say? That I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole entire life… more than I want to someday star as the lead in a play at the RSC or the West End or Broadway. For a pensive moment I wonder if Susan texted her earlier – but Susan wouldn’t do that, right? Especially when she knows how messed up Lily is right now.
I reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear. “You’re in pain, Lily. But it won’t last forever.”
“I’ve stopped bleeding now. It was weeks ago!” she cries, and I realise there’s no good way to handle this, except to do the decent thing no matter how much it might hurt her.
“So why did he text me earlier this week, then?”
She scowls, sitting up. “What?”
“He texted this week.”
“Show me.”
I take my phone out and show her the message, which isn’t hard to locate on the thread I have going with Paul – being that we’ve barely texted in years.
She’s shaking her head. “He waited until he was out of the country to text you?”
“Because he’s scared and knows I will kill him, Lily.” I sound firm, but I also feel it, adrenalin coursing through me, anger having got my blood up.
“What is this rivalry?” she asks. “What… why? Does he hate you because we’re friends?”
“He’s hated me for years, Lily. My mum has money. He thinks I have everything… a career in London, all that, blah blah.”
Plus, how could he of all people not see that I love Lily? He must know. He must envy my restraint. He must envy the rapport I have with her, the friendship, the trust. I also showed him how protective I am when I saw him that time in Trinity shopping centre…
“There’s something you’re not saying,” she mumbles, chewing her lip.
“I was training for this role once and took up jiu jitsu. Didn’t get the role but kept up the training. It’s great fun but it also helps to be fit for the stage. Anyway, you could say when I gave Paul a whack, he knew I wasn’t messing around. He knows I will deck the bastard and he knows because of our history, he can’t dob me in or none of the others will ever speak to him again.”
Lily’s staring into space when I look up.
“That sounds like a lot of testosterone I don’t understand,” she says under her breath.
“Well, he’s a cunt, like I said.” Even Susan agreed, though I’d better not mention Susan, who I’m meant to be in love with.
“I changed jobs,” she says, picking up her cup of tea as though to distract me from leaving.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I work with the police now, deciding whether to escalate certain cases and all that. I’m in the call room most of the time. It’s pretty dark shit, you’d enjoy it. If you need inspiration for something, I don’t know.”
She needs something, doesn’t she? A glimmer… a bit of hope.
“When I get established in London again, why don’t you visit?” I put it out there.
“Yeah? You’re staying?”
“We’ll see.” I give her a wink and lean in quickly, firmly planting a kiss on her cheek this time – a very hot cheek, actually. I stand up and think of my mother’s repulsive big knickers. “I’ve got to fire my agent and tell him he’s the world’s biggest arsehole, so let’s see what happens after that, hey?”
She snickers and smiles, genuinely, for the first time today.
“See you soon, darlin’,” I say, walking out of the room, “and be good.”
I leave the flat pronto, dispose of her trash outside and run down the hill towards the nearest bus stop.
I flag one down soon enough – there are always buses in Leeds, even at night – and before I know it, I’m home and bolting down King’s Road towards our mock-Tudor house with an overhanging front. All the properties up this way of Leeds are the most lavish and characterful in the city, my mum’s house no exception.
I put the key in the door and everything’s in darkness.
“Theodore?” she bellows, her voice coming from upstairs.
“Just me, Mother.”
“Get me a hot toddy darling and fill the hot water bottle.”
I comply and get myself a toddy at the same time. I’m dying to get in my room and wash and change but I sit with her, tucking in her hot water bottle and checking she’s okay.
“Where’ve you been this time?” she asks, her pale translucent skin stretched across her stark cheekbones, a facet I inherited.
“Around and about.”
“You look… like you’re in love,” she marvels, squinting.
I chuckle and point at her drink. “You’re seeing things now, Mother.”
“Who is she?” she asks, grabbing my hand before I can leave.
My mother, who used to be a model – it’s obvious – is as observant as ever, despite her advancing years. I’m the product of a relationship she embarked on late in life, once the lure of random lovers wore off and the yearning to settle down became unavoidable. It was unlucky that my father didn’t have long left – and died of a heart attack when I was just two. I don’t really remember him, just the times I’d walk in on Mum crying when she didn’t think I was around – even well into my teenage years.
I don’t think she’s ever been with anyone else. It’s always been so blatantly obvious to me that to lose a love like that must be hard, because she never got over it. So it’s always been us two and our adventures around art galleries and theatres and old libraries. My father was an Italian painter and when modelling dried up, my mum became a photographer. She has an amazing memory and can recall everyone she’s ever shot.
We lived in London for most of my childhood and I was at boarding school in Surrey for many years, coming home to the city at weekends – unless she was out of the country. Many times, I was sent to my Auntie Karen’s in Leeds during the summer holidays to stay with my cousins if my mother went travelling.
When I was sixteen my mother had to retire from her job and we moved up north to be closer to Karen, my mum’s sister. That’s when I started at St Anne’s Catholic Academy and met the people I now call my friends. I’d always hated boarding school with a passion and decided it was a blessing in disguise that my mother’s deteriorating arthritis had forced us up north and for me to change schools.
My surname is my mother’s maiden name because she thought I would be bullied at school if I was called Theodore Lombardi. (Perhaps also that people would make the connection with my father, a famous artist, and might treat me differently if they knew I’m his son.)
My mother’s years of crouching, bending, manipulating her long limbs and elegant frame in order to get an angle or the perfect shot have left her in pain, daily. Her joints hurt, arthritis has her in its grip, and yet she’s still utterly beautiful, at least to me.
“Who is she?” she asks, with a little wrinkle in her nose, mischief in her eyes.
I chuckle and flush with embarrassment. “She’s too good for me which is why I have to sort my shit out now rather than later, before it’s too late.”
“Oh good, because I need to go to London and see the proper bone c
racker, if you don’t mind. Plus, some culture of course.”
“Of course,” I chuckle, laughing as I leave the room. “Because sorting my shit out means going to London.”
“Hey, I would’ve stayed if it weren’t for my rotten bones,” she shouts after me, in that hippie, overgrown-teenage way she still has, to this day. I wouldn’t have her any other way.
I shut the door on my room, dash to the shower and jump under the spray. God, I’ve needed to get clean all day. I need a bloody good night’s sleep tonight, too.
As I’m letting the water revive me, my mind turns back to that kiss and how full and plump her mouth felt against mine… how she moved in and sealed our kiss and took my breath away, the sizzle of it… the tingling… the shocking softness and the ache in my core…
I’m hard in no time and grabbing my blood-filled shaft like a man possessed. Christ, and I thought it was bad before, but now I have actual, real fodder for masturbation… because we actually fucking kissed! And it was only a chaste, prim kiss… and yet, it was still fucking…
Explosive.
Chapter Five
A few days later, after accompanying Mum to appointments and holding her up around galleries, not to mention fluffing her pillows in expensive hotel suites, she finally heads back home where my aunt will meet her at the station, deposit her back in bed and feed her own sister multiple concoctions of painkillers – all because she wanted to make this trip with me. You couldn’t find two more different sisters – my aunt Karen stout, strong, unbreakable, a mother of four of her own and an adoptive mother to me, the urchin. My mother, with her willowy figure, incredible bone structure and flair for artistry, couldn’t be more different from Karen, a schoolteacher who ran her household like a tight ship and was the only person who taught me any semblance of discipline and opened my eyes to a reality beyond fabulous people and their frenetic but beautifully cocktail-soaked lifestyles.
Now I’m free of my mother’s requirements and at liberty to go about my own business, my first order of the day is to flag down my agent and tell him how shoddy his work has been of late.
I’m striding down the street towards his office in the back end of Soho, imagining all the things I’m going to say.
“I should have had more roles by now… You’ve basically ruined my life because if I hadn’t gone abroad, Lily might not have got with Paul and I wouldn’t be thinking about the fact she’s broken and I can’t put her back together just like that, can I? Plus, you’re also a bit fat and that might make me look bad (sorry but we’re meant to be in showbusiness)” – shameful of me, but hey – “and, also, you’re a twat. So release me from my contract unless you’re gonna do something really special.”
I jump the stairs leading to his offices on the second floor of a grand old building nestled away between houses – nowhere really – and find the office largely empty and silent. It’s a Friday afternoon, best time to catch him off guard.
I stomp towards his office and pound on the door. “Neil, it’s Theo!”
There’s some giggling and shuffling and banging, then someone in a very tight pink skirt opens the door, blushing.
I catch my agent zipping up just as she squeezes past me into the other room.
“You didn’t schedule,” he groans.
Fucking Americans, needing everything in the diary or else their heads explode.
“What’s going on because I’ve been meaning to call you but didn’t know if you needed a few days recovery…”
In his heavily accented room, wood panelling everywhere, I plonk myself in the chair opposite his and fold my hands in my lap.
“Well, I’m not happy, Neil. I’m not fucking happy. The tour was nice and all but I want to be on the stage for real and I’m not fucking happy.” I find myself trembling slightly and worrying I’ve reached the pinnacle of my bravado – already waning with my outburst of sudden conflict-seeking, when conflict and displeasure is something I rarely venture toward.
He purses his lips and fake smiles, then rests, then fake smiles again – a bit like an old git trying to get the feeling back in his chops.
“Got an audition for you next week but wouldn’t worry, think you already got it, big guy.”
He slaps a few sheets of paper on the desk in front of me held together only by a thin paperclip. I just hope his office junior wasn’t on this earlier – or if she was, clothing was between her and the paper.
I see it’s an audition for a big production of Hamlet and they want me to audition for the lead role this time.
“Some shmuck in some tiny town in France…?” He looks at me quizzically.
“Strasbourg,” I answer.
“Yeah, sure, yeah… some shmuck saw you in the play and looked you up, got in touch with me, hey presto. Now what did I say to you when we first met, hmm? These things take time. They take luck. They take effort.”
“Yeah, my effort,” I grumble.
He reaches out for the paperwork to take it back and I swipe it out of his reach.
“Gotta have some kind of agent, I suppose. Might as well be you.”
“The woman on the phone said they liked your… your grit. Something like that. You’re gonna play it like some modern millennial prick broken by the demands of the new age or some shit. Anyway, they like you and requested you. It’s on at the Garrick Theatre or someplace, I dunno, directed by some guy who is famous in Venice. I don’t know. Some Gustav Varga. It’s a special anniversary performance with all the bells and whistles and you’re invited as guest of honour, at least that was the vibe I got.”
“Holy shit, you’re joking—”
“No, and he was the guy who saw you in France. So, you pretty much got the gig, Mr Richards.”
The mysterious Varga is one of my favourite directors. Never did I think he’d frequent a dusty old theatre in the sleepy old backwaters of France. Perhaps he likes undiscovered talent, hopefully doesn’t want anything else from me anyway…
Neil makes hand gestures like it’s of little consequence that Varga is directing and it doesn’t mean anything to him. I wonder if he’s even in the right game. He should’ve been a dodgy car salesman in Essex or something, but fate gave him a couple of young stars in New York and here he is, still doing it thirty years later.
“You’re still my agent, then… for now.”
“We’re gonna make you a star, kid,” he says, lighting up a cigar.
Maybe it’s post-coital, maybe it’s celebratory given how many doors this could open… or maybe he’s the kind of guy who always has a cigar this time on a Friday afternoon.
I’m about to leave the office when I turn in the doorway and look across the room at him. “He himself saw me in the play? But I was aged up… to play Hamlet’s father?”
“Hey, he always did enjoy a teenage bimbo sucking him off at the back of theatres, what can I say? Doesn’t matter which town… which play. You must have stood out, kid.”
I wince as I leave the premises but a part of me is kicked into gear and I feel hopeful for the first time in years.
Chapter Six
Since I landed the role two months ago, my life has changed so dramatically already – it feels like nothing else could ever match up to the dream I’m already living. I remember the first day I met Gustav who is almost the same height and shape as me, bar the fact he’s fifty years old, speaks with a strange multilingual accent and has a slight hunch, plus a bit of a paunch. He said to me, “You’re a very beautiful man,” while grabbing my biceps and testing my abdominals for strength with a few playful punches. “You must have had many beautiful women… I have.” He had a gleam in his eye I didn’t trust but a feel for the play I did. He told me I was to live and breathe this character and that’s what I’ve done – no friends, no socialising, only living and breathing the text until the prompts are imprinted on the inside of my mind. Tonight, we’re performing to patrons and friends of the Garrick before we officially preview in September. London is empty during th
e height of summer but boy will they get a show once they return. I never thought myself capable of commanding such a performance – never imagined in my wildest dreams this would one day be me – but here I am, doing just that. Yeah, the director is mad and our props are freakish to say the least, plus Hamlet is even more unhinged than usual and that’s saying something – but truly, the fact I’m getting to spin my own version of so many of the famous lines of Shakespeare text, spoken by so many other renowned actors across the world before me… blows my mind.
I’m given my last curtain call and check my tight black t-shirt and tight black jeans aren’t sporting even the tiniest of flaws, because I can’t have any identity. I’m mad because I’m lost in a sea of identity theft and not sure where I belong.
I head backstage and think of Lily, somewhere out there. I added her to the guest list after Gustav told a few of us it was cool to do so. The theatre won’t be even half full tonight but I daren’t look out there in case I spot where she’s sitting and she becomes a distraction. Seeing her tonight is all I’ve been living for lately because my mind and body are exhausted. I’m ready to get into the flow of performance now, shake off the rehearsals and let this show do its own thing.
“Break a leg,” someone whispers as I’m about to go on, and between trying not to throw up and feeling utterly lost and confused as to what it is I’m doing and why, I find a smidgen of calm when I think of all that came before this – and the dream I had so long ago.
I don my invisible cape of melancholy and solitude and walk on… as though I was born to play this role. The hours and hours, the late nights, the sleepless dreams in which I recite my lines and imagine myself stealing the show… have now all come to this.
If there were ever a time to make my mother proud, it’s tonight. She’s not here, but in spirit, she is.
I walk on stage to join the cast already assembled and become enveloped by the frosty atmosphere and the dull lighting which only seeks to highlight my contempt, as I utter the words, “’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother…”
Bad Actor Page 3