Less Than Three

by Jess Whitecroft

  He sighed. “Rob has what we call life-altering injuries,” he said. “And life alteration is often painful. Sometimes there’s…collateral damage.”

  “And that’s me, is it? Collateral damage?”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. “This isn’t your fault, Nathan,” he said. “It isn’t anyone’s, well…other than the moron who was driving that Chelsea tractor.”

  “Do they know anything else about that?”

  “Driving while doing Instagram stories, whatever the hell they might be. Luckily her kids weren’t in the car at the time. I hope they throw the fucking book at her.”

  I tried to feel angry, but I was simply too tired. I was sure the rage would find me later, but not right now. All I wanted to do was keep drinking, and forget that everything was smashed and shattered.

  “I have to let him go, don’t I?” I said, after a while, when there were too many thoughts in my head to stay silent any more.

  Simon hesitated. “I don’t think you have a choice.”

  “No, I know.”

  “He’s going to have to make a lot of changes in my his life…”

  “…and he doesn’t need another set of feelings to worry about. I know.” I took another mouthful of whisky, and this time I barely felt the burn. “Why him?” I said, like a child. “This is so fucking unfair.”

  Simon sighed. “I know,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a doctor it’s that the worst things always seem to happen to the people who deserve far better. I’ve seen kids no older than we were when you broke your arm, and they’ve already been through three cycles of chemo and two amputations. Osteosarcoma. Never gets less fucked up, or unfair.”

  I sipped and thought about karma for a moment. Was there such a thing?

  “We were going to tell you, you know,” I said. “We were.”

  “Oh, stop it,” he said. “Like that matters any more. You loved him.”

  “I still love him.” The tears came, and I couldn’t stop them. “I can’t just turn it off because he needs me to.”

  Simon sighed and put his arm around me, and that was enough to finish me off. I sobbed on his shoulder, soaking the fabric of his shirt. He held me stiffly, but he shushed and patted and did his best with it, even though he’d never been physically demonstrative when it came to showing affection.

  “I love you,” I said, because I had to say it to someone, and because he would always be my brother.

  Simon gave a faint sniff. “Obviously,” he said. “And…um…you know. Same.”

  I wiped my eyes. “Oh my God. You are such an android sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and I felt his lips move against my hair. “I do love you, you know.”

  Rob went back to Northern Ireland the following week. I went back to work, accepting condolences from the women, who treated me very, very gently, even Rupa. We opened in September and although we were small compared to the current West End giants – The Book Of Mormon, Les Mis, McKellan’s King Lear – the reviews were excellent. The Times called my Valmont ‘a pitch perfect portrait of male entitlement.’ The Guardian said he was ‘all the more disturbing for his near-miss flirtations with a conscience,’ and everyone praised Rupa for delivering such a timely and nuanced production. Nadia snagged a much better agent off the back of it, and Poppy was flying high: she had a call back for a new historical thing they were filming about the mistresses of Charles II. “They’ll probably ask me to get my tits out,” she said. “You can’t do history without tits these days, and especially if Nell Gwyn is involved.”

  “Tell them you’re not going to,” said Rupa. “Just say it. ‘I’m not getting my tits out.’”

  Poppy sighed. “I’d love it, but have you seen the fucking paintings from that period? Everyone Peter Lely painted was in the middle of some kind of blouse malfunction. Random nipples. Everywhere. They’re going to insist that my norks need to be visible in the interests of historical authenticity.”

  “Authenticity, my arse,” said Rupa. “They want another Game of Thrones, and that means gratuitous nudity. I’ll bet you any money that right now there’s a coked up pair of executives trying to figure out a way to have Charles II fly back to reclaim his throne on the back of a massive CGI dragon.”

  Poppy laughed. “Alternatively, they might be trying to cast a Charles II who gets his dick out. Full royal frontal. It’s not like the character would be short of bedroom scenes.”

  “Nah,” said Nadia, stirring her drink. “I think the CGI dragon is more likely than an equitable approach to onscreen nudity.” She gave me a mischievous look. “What about you, Nathan? “Would you go full frontal if it was artistically justified?”

  “Absolutely. Does it have to be artistically justified? Because I’m down with gratuitous nudity. There’s not nearly enough of that in my life lately.”

  There was an awkward hush, and I realised I’d stepped on a landmine. Just when they were getting used to me being something like my old self, instead of a heartbroken mess who kept breaking down in tears with no warning. Poppy quickly steered the conversation back to nudity – some Hollywood actor had helpfully had his dick out recently – and Nadia sort of peeled me away from the edge of the conversation under the pretence of grabbing another vodka and lime.

  She knew me very well by now. When you have that many frenzied make-out scenes with a person it sometimes creates a strange and sudden kind of intimacy. That or immediate, visceral loathing. Fortunately we’d gone in the former direction. “Have you heard from him?” she asked. It really wasn’t a stretch for her to play Tourvel. She had the same intelligence, the same soft energy.

  I shook my head. “No. And I can’t contact him, because I know I’ll just beg him. And I know that’s not fair. He’s got enough on his plate right now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It seems harsh.”

  “It is, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s…”

  “…beyond your control?”

  I gave her a sad smile. I’d said the line so many times it had turned into a kind of in-joke now. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  *

  I was nervous. Nervous in a way I’d never been when I sat in an office at University College, pretending to be my brother.

  This time they were here to interview me.

  There were two of them. Gareth Hawthorne, the current artistic director of the RSC, should have been the one who intimidated me the most, but beside him sat a familiar face, Anna Tomlinson. I’d seen her on stage and TV since I was a kid, and she had the odd radiance of the famous. She was in her fifties now, but her skin still had that glow, as though millions of eyes had turned her flesh into a reflective surface.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Nathan Gallagher, and I will be doing the monologue from act two, scene one of M…the Scottish Play.”

  I’d debated with myself over that, especially after so many months in the company of the sternly unsuperstitious Rupa. “What do they think is going to happen if you say Macbeth?” she said. “Seriously – unless Duncan’s horses actually turn and eat each other and a sodding shrubbery marches into my theatre then I’m not going to break a sweat over it.”

  She had a point, but I was playing it safe. Opportunities like this didn’t come up very often, and I didn’t want to piss anyone off.

  I got straight into it. Is this a dagger which I see before me? A big speech, and an important one, because it’s the first time we get a glimpse of just how spectacularly Macbeth is going to come unglued over the course of the play. One minute he’s hallucinating daggers and the next there’s a ghost at the feast and he’s screaming at phantoms in front of his dinner guests. But this is just a foretaste of madness – a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.

  Hear not my steps, which way they walk – he’s stepping outside of himself. Nothing feels real, because he’s about to commit cold blooded murder, and when the deed is done nothing is going to feel the sa
me ever again. This is the threshold. This is the moral event horizon that Macbeth crosses and blows all that tragic hero potential. And there will be others, but this is the first. This is the defining moment.

  “Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

  That summons thee to heaven or to hell.”

  They didn’t applaud. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

  Gareth Hawthorne spoke first. “That’s a heavy piece,” he said. “Why did you choose it?”

  “It’s Shakespeare,” I said. “And this is the Royal Shakespeare Company.” Shit. That sounded glib.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You want the title roles?” he said.

  “Eventually, yes,” I said. “I want to challenge myself as an actor. This is all I ever wanted to do, and I’m going to try and do my absolute best with it. Obviously I know I’m not going to be playing leads straight out of the gate, but I think it’s good to have aspirations.”

  Better? I hoped so. My tongue felt like parched leather.

  “Your reviews for Dangerous Liaisons were raves,” said Anna Tomlinson. “Congratulations.”

  “Uh, yeah, thank you,” I said, struggling to coax moisture back to my mouth. I took a quick sip of water. “I was very pleased.”

  “And how did you feel about the role?”

  “Sick, actually,” I said, and I was sure that was the wrong answer, but I was stuck in acting mode. A lot of people think acting is nothing more than a lie, but in order to perform a credible impersonation of another living, breathing, fully rounded human being, a person has to dig very deep into emotional truths, some of them uncomfortable. And God knows Valmont had taken me to the depths of some ugly ones.

  They were looking at me, waiting for me to elaborate. So I did. The truth was out there. “I suppose I’d fantasised about playing Valmont for so long that I’d idealised him in my head,” I said. “But when I was forced to really examine him I realised he’s basically pond scum. Just a genuinely awful individual, who’s too fundamentally shallow and broken to realise how bad he is. I think he has glimpses of it, but they’re not enough to save him or redeem him. He’s not a smooth seducer. He’s a serial rapist who ruins women for fun, and Rupa – our director – she was very conscious of how much darker the play was going to look in the light of MeToo.”

  “She did a fantastic job,” said Anna Tomlinson, nodding. “It was extremely uncomfortable viewing at certain points. Especially the scene with you and Cecile.”

  Ugh. The rape scene. “Yeah, that was horrible,” I said. “Gemma and I had a couple of very stiff drinks after the first rehearsal of that one.” My brain finally caught up with what she’d said. “Wait…you saw it?”

  “Twice, actually,” she said.

  “Oh. Wow. Sorry.” I got a grip of myself. “I’m a bit starstruck. This is kind of surreal, talking to you like this. You were Queen Anne in the very first Richard III I ever saw.”

  She winced. “Ooh, that’s going back a few years. On tour, wasn’t it? Where did you see us?”

  “Brighton.”

  “Oh, love Brighton. I was down there for a wedding at the Royal Pavilion just recently. Beautiful.”

  “I bet.”

  “So…” said Gareth Hawthorne, impatient to steer things back on track. “We’re not thinking the Scottish Play.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “How do you feel about growing a beard?”

  “Um…sure. I’ll have a go,” I said. “I’m not very good at it. I’ll warn you now. I never seem to get past the standard hobo trim.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to be perfect,” said Hawthorne. “For a solider. It’s just that the name Enobarbus means bronze beard, so…”

  He was fucking with me. “Antony and Cleo? Enobarbus?” I said, barely daring to believe it.

  He thawed. Smiled. “What do you think?”

  “I think he has so many good lines.”

  “Would you like to read some for us?” said Anna Tomlinson, handing me a script.

  “I would love to.”

  By the time it was over I was dazed. Dizzy. I texted Simon to tell him, but he was busy and didn’t reply, so I floated back home, desperate to tell someone.

  And then my phone rang.

  I stared at the display for a second, unable to believe what I was seeing, then my brain caught up with my thumb and I hit the button.

  “Hello?”

  Rob paused, like he’d been caught off guard because he hadn’t expected me to answer. “Hello Nathan,” he said.

  “Is that really you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s me. How are you?” He sounded like himself. His old self.

  “Uh…great,” I said, thrown off balance. I’d dreamed about this conversation. About all the poetic and wonderful words I would use to win him back and persuade him that what we had was good enough to deserve a second chance. And now I couldn’t remember any of them. “You know…busy.”

  “I know,” he said. His accent still made my toes curl. “I saw your reviews. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” I was shaking, flying along on the adrenaline rush. “Actually I just got back from an audition with the RSC.”

  He gasped. I never imagined that he would be the first one I got to tell, but the fact that I did felt like a happy dream, or a presentiment that no matter how fucked the world around us was, we still belonged together.

  “That’s amazing,” he said, when I told him. “I’m so proud of you. I knew you could do it.”

  “And now you’re going to make me cry.” Too late. I was already in floods. “It’s so good to hear your voice again. How are you? Never mind me. What about you?”

  He sighed. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Been better, been worse. Lots of physiotherapy.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Good,” he said. “Painful, but they tell me pain is better than no pain. Means the nerves are working. I’m not going to be running the London marathon any time soon, but I’m getting there.”

  “You’ll make it. I know you.”

  He took a breath. “Maybe,” he said, and paused again. “Nathan, listen – can I be really cheeky and ask for a favour?”

  “Anything.”

  “You know the little black cat statue you bought me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I’ve got this horrible feeling it got lost in the move. I’ve searched everywhere and I can’t find it, and I’m hoping it got left behind somehow, on the boat.”

  “Okay,” I said. It was a tiny thing, something that could easily slip between seat cushions or behind a bunk. And the last time I’d seen it had been that morning – the morning before the accident. The night before he’d put it on the shelf above his bed. “And you want me to go down to Chelsea and have a look?”

  “Would you mind? I know it’s a nerve.”

  “No, b—” I managed to stop myself before I called him baby. “Not at all.”

  “Thank you so much,” he said, and if he’d heard the reflexive endearment he didn’t let on. “I’ll let them know you’re coming. I’ve been renting it out to a couple.”

  “Oh, cool.” Another flicker of hope. He hadn’t sold it. “Give them my number. They can text me when it’s convenient for them.”

  He could have asked the tenants directly, but he hadn’t. And that, too, gave me hope.

  The next day I went down to Chelsea Harbour. There was a faint chill in the air for the first time since the long, parched summer had made cold a distant memory. The clouds above the Thames were grey, heavy and swollen with the threat of rain. Seeing the boat again was like a punch to the gut. Rob’s herbs had all died and the empty plant pots were neatly stacked against the side of the cabin. A dreamcatcher – a thing Rob would have sideeyed as tacky – hung in the window. I saw someone move inside the wheelhouse, and then a girl stepped out. She was young and blonde and pretty, but I couldn’t help disliking her on sight, for no other reason that she was occupying a space wher
e only Rob truly belonged.

  “You’re here for the cat?” she said, before I could say a word.

  “Yeah. Hi. Did you find it?”

  “You’re in luck,” she said, and handed it over. “It was in the bedroom. Must have fallen down the side of the bed while they were packing up.”

  Yes. It had been in the bedroom. I remembered him putting it on the shelf over the bed, where it had watched over us on that last night before everything went wrong. We’d been so happy, and so oblivious to the dirty trick that fate was about to pull on us. I thought of strangers sleeping in that same bunk, and I hated it.

  “How are you getting along with it?” I said, nodding to the boat in an attempt to force myself to be polite.

  “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. “Really lovely.” She dialled down her smile on purpose, and I forgave her for being here. “I mean, it’s sad, too…with the circumstances and all. He must miss it very much.”

  “He does,” I said. He hadn’t said anything of the sort to me, but I felt reliably sure of that much, at least. Rob had always been proud of his unconventional home, and took a perverse delight in ‘lowering the tone’, as he put it.

  I propped the cat on the edge of a windowsill and took a picture – to show him I had it – then I headed home. He texted me back while I was on the Tube. Two words. Two characters. Thank you. <3

  Less than three. Hadn’t seen that in a while. I turned those two characters over and over in my head all evening. I knew I had no right to pressure him, and that he had enough going on right now, but there had to be some way to let him know I still cared. Not boomboxes under windows or dangling from Ferris wheels, but he’d sent me that text, and I knew I’d regret it until I died if I didn’t at least ask.

  So I called him back. “I think it must have fallen down the side of the bed,” I said, turning the tiny black cat over in my fingers as I spoke. “But it’s here. All in one piece.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and this time his voice said what he usually said in characters.

  I paused for a moment, my heart beating too hard and too fast. “Do you want me to send it?” I said. “Or will you let me bring it to you?”