Played!

by JL Merrow

  The spell broken, Con looked away. “Look, I’ll think about it, all right?”

  Con jumped as Tristan clapped him on both shoulders. “Excellent! I knew I could count on you. Let me call and give Heather the good news.” He spun away again and picked up the receiver of Nanna Geary’s phone.

  Con stood up hastily. “No! I said I’d think about it, yeah? Don’t go telling her stuff that’s not true.”

  Tristan gave him the puppy-dog look again.

  Bloody hell, Con was in so much trouble right now. “I’ll give it a go, all right?” he said, because fuck, how could he look at that face and not? “Just…just don’t tell anyone. Not until we’ve tried it a bit first.” He was betting Tristan wouldn’t be so keen after Con had tried and made a complete tit of himself.

  Fuck. He was going to have to make a complete tit of himself in front of Tristan. How the hell did he manage to get into this?

  No. No, it was good. Tristan would see how crap Con was, and then he’d stop all the flirting and the offering him stuff he wasn’t going to get to keep. Because Tristan was only here until the end of September, wasn’t he?

  Con’s guts felt like someone had shoved a knife in and twisted. Hard.

  “Not a problem,” Tristan was saying. “My lips are sealed.” He put a finger across them to illustrate.

  That just made Con look at them, which really wasn’t helping right now.

  “So shall we?” Tristan went on, looking like he hadn’t noticed all the turmoil going on inside Con right now, thank God. “You’re not busy right now, are you? No, of course not, silly me. You’ve just had a job cancelled. Well, then. Are you sitting comfortably?” He gestured at Con’s chair and waited pointedly until Con sat down again. “Then I’ll begin. The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things, but we shall eschew the usual alliterative efforts and get straight down to business.” He leaned in close with a—yeah, all right, Con was going to think of it this way—Puckish smile, his eyes dancing with mischief. “Bottom,” he breathed.

  Con swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, and stopped.

  “Well, tell me about him. About how you see him.”

  “He’s…” Con screwed up his eyes. “He’s a bit, I dunno. Up himself. Thinks he can play all the roles in the rude mechanicals’ play all by himself. Wants to take charge of everything. And when the queen of the fairies falls in love with him, he doesn’t think that’s anything weird, ’cos he thinks he’s God’s gift to women and fairies.” Yeah, and somebody remind him again why Tristan wasn’t still playing the role? Con felt a rush of relief at the thought. At least he wasn’t so far gone on the bloke he couldn’t see him like he really was.

  Then again, there was a difference between Tristan and Nick Bottom, wasn’t there? They both thought they were hot stuff, but Tristan had the looks and the talent to back it up…

  Shit. Time to shut off that line of thought. “And he gets loads of stuff wrong,” Con went on quick. “Like calling a lion a wildfowl, and he doesn’t even notice his head’s been changed into an ass’s head. He just thinks he needs a shave.”

  “Excellent! You see? You know the part already.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can play it. And that’s even if I manage to get the lines into my head in the first place.” Con bit his lip. “You know I’m dyslexic, right?”

  “It has been mentioned, yes.” Tristan gave an airy wave. “But this isn’t the Dark Ages. You must have had extra help at school.”

  “You reckon? Don’t think we went to the same sort of school.”

  “Surely your parents—”

  “Yeah, well, they weren’t around. Well, my m-mum—” Con thumped the table, not sure if he was angry at himself for the stutter, or for calling her that. “Caroline. She was around sometimes, but those weren’t exactly the good times. And I’ve never met my dad.” He stared fiercely at Tristan, daring him to make some flippant comment.

  Tristan just gave an odd little grimace. “Well, fathers can be overrated. I’ve never really got on all that well with mine. Particularly since Mother died. The constant paternal disappointment does get a little wearing, after a while.”

  That was… That was so not what Con would’ve expected to hear. “What? What’s your dad got to be disappointed about?” He stared at Tristan, trying to work out if he was on the level.

  “Where to start, dear boy, where to start? Shall we just put it down to my essential frivolity, and move on?”

  “Frivolity. That a posh way of saying you’re gay?”

  “No, although I’m oddly taken with the idea of it being the new euphemism. The twenty-first century equivalent of earnest. And I’ll admit my disdain for the distaff side hasn’t helped. Moving on now…”

  Con was frowning so hard he was getting a headache. “But you’ve got a degree from Cambridge, some other thing in Classical Acting… What’s so bloody frivolous about all that?”

  Tristan shrugged. “Or, as my father would put it, and frequently does: I’ve read a few dusty old books and farted around on stage for a bit.”

  “You mean he’s not proud of you? That’s just…” Con couldn’t even finish that sentence. “Your gran was proud of you,” he said instead.

  “My… Oh, you mean Nanna Geary. Well, yes, I’m afraid she always had a bit of a blind spot where I was concerned.”

  Blind spot? For being proud of someone who got into the top university in the country? Who got into some posh drama school afterwards even though his first degree had been in English, not drama? Con would’ve thought Tristan was having him on, but he seemed, well, not so much serious as resigned.

  Bloody hell, some families needed to get their priorities straightened out.

  “She wasn’t my grandmother, by the way,” Tristan went on. “Nanna, in her case, was an honorific.”

  “What, she was like a godmother or something?”

  “Yeeeessss… Something like that. In any case, we are straying ever further from the point. Am I to take it all written material is to be avoided?”

  Con nodded, his jaw clenched. Put like that, it sounded like he was a total thicko.

  Tristan didn’t seem like he was having a dig, though. And his tone was still businesslike as he went on. “Not to worry, not to worry. Easy enough to work around. I’ll make recordings for you, and you can listen to them while you drive. Or work, even. Now, let’s take a look at how we first meet Nick Bottom. Act one, scene two… Book, book, my kingdom for a—aha!” He grabbed a slim, new-looking paperback from behind the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. “Here we are. So, we start with the rude mechanicals—”

  “Why are they called that?” Con interrupted, thinking if anyone knew, it’d be a bloke with an English degree from Cambridge.

  Tristan blinked. “Oh, mechanical simply meant manual labourer, in the bard’s time. And rude, well. Ignorant. Uneducated.”

  Right. There was a tight, unpleasant feeling in Con’s chest, like pins and needles or something. “So, basically, me,” he said, his voice sounding a bit funny. “No bloody wonder Hev was so keen for me to take the part.”

  “What? No, I think you underestimate the difficulty of playing a comic figure in one of Shakespeare’s plays. After all, consider in whose footsteps you follow. Samuel Phelps; Herbert Beerbohm Tree…” Tristan paused, maybe because he’d seen Con’s blank look. “He was Oliver Reed’s grandfather,” he added, sounding like Con’s gran when she’d told him off for not putting his plates in the dishwasher again. “How about these, then? Ralph Richardson; James Cagney; Kevin Kline?”

  Con nodded. He’d heard of them. Even seen some films they’d been in. Gran had liked her old black and white movies.

  “Good. So you see, Bottom isn’t a role one gives to the man off the Clapham omnibus.” Tristan flashed that Puckish smile again. “I, for one, am most particular whom I allow to be my B
ottom.”

  Hopefully the faint tingling in Con’s face and neck wasn’t an actual blush at the innuendo. “So you’re not pissed off about me doing it, instead of you?” he asked, a bit surprised at himself.

  Okay, so now Tristan’s smile was more like a Cheshire Cat’s, or at least, how Con had imagined it when he’d listened to the old story cassette he’d had as a kid. Gran had got it for Caroline when she’d been little, but that didn’t mean Con couldn’t enjoy it. “By no means. Turnabout is fair play, I always say.”

  Okay, this time he’d definitely blushed. Con swallowed. “So. Act one, scene two, yeah?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  What Plighted Cunning Hides

  Tristan sprawled on Nanna Geary’s sofa, his hands behind his head and a contented smile on his face. He’d still got it. Con had been putty in his hands. Figuratively speaking, of course. He still hadn’t managed to get his literal hands on the man, but that would surely follow. And when it did, any comparisons with soft, malleable building materials would hopefully be entirely inappropriate. This summer was going to be a glorious swansong, before the death of the soul that would follow in the Fall…

  No. He wasn’t going to think about the job in New York. Plenty of time to dwell on that when he was actually there, slogging away at a desk on matters fiscal for, oh, the next forty years… Oh God.

  Tristan flung himself off the sofa, his good mood melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind. Were his revels truly ended? Was it really too late to get out of this?

  He paced into the kitchen in his socks, too dispirited to even watch where he trod for small animals, living or dead. With any luck he’d step on one, skid, and take another chunk out of Nanna Geary’s kitchen wall, this time with his skull. Rounding his little life with a sleep was sounding rather attractive right now.

  Hmm. To sleep… Perchance to dream about Con once more? That would be a consummation devoutly to be wished… Damn it. Sometimes, Tristan deeply regretted the fact that his brain had not come equipped with an off switch.

  Reaching the fridge freezer without, alas, having managed to shuffle off this mortal coil, he cursed his luck and got out the pizza he’d planned to have for dinner. It was in fact barely lunchtime now but damn it, he needed some comfort food.

  One thing he hadn’t been able to persuade Con to do was stay to lunch. He’d run off shortly before midday like an inverted Cinderella, pleading a backlog of jobs that needed doing. While Tristan was all in favour of a sound work ethic in the working classes in principle, in practice it’d proved annoyingly inconvenient. Hmm. Tristan really needed to keep in mind all the work he could legitimately pay Con to do around Nanna Geary’s house. Unfortunately, every time the man appeared all practical considerations seemed to fly straight out of the window and off to play with the fairies.

  Tristan closed the oven on the pizza, and sat down at the dining table to make a list.

  He’d got as far as “fix cat flap in kitchen dor” (the spelling of which he hastily corrected, somewhat appalled at his sudden attack of sentimentality) when the phone rang. Tristan hesitated, then popped into the kitchen to pick it up. Nanna Geary didn’t have caller ID. Caller ID had probably not been invented yet when Nanna Geary’s telephone, which was so incredibly ancient it actually had a curly cord attaching it to the wall, had been constructed. “Hello?”

  “Tristan, darling, I’ve been trying to get in touch for days. What on earth have you done with your phone? I had to call your father to get this number, and he didn’t seem very pleased to give it to me.”

  Tristan beamed as Suki’s familiar throaty tones filled his ear. “Suki, my cherub, how delightful! Well, not that you’ve had trouble getting in touch. Mea, as they say in Rome, culpa. I keep forgetting to charge the thing.” Actually, he’d been rather enjoying using Nanna Geary’s landline instead; it even had an honest-to-goodness dial, for heaven’s sake. He’d taken to keeping a pen nearby, not so much to take notes as to use it to dial the numbers, like an elegantly coiffed, scarlet-lipped secretary in an old-fashioned film. “How are you, darling? And how’s my replacement settling in?”

  Suki gave a bitter laugh. “Not well. Not at all well. He’s an opinionated, self-aggrandising little sod. And not in a good way, like you.” There was a pause, and Tristan could almost see her dragging on her cigarette. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to come back to us?”

  “How about we make a deal, darling? You persuade Father it’s a sensible career move, and I’ll come back to the Players.”

  “Worried he’ll cut you off without a penny like some disgraced Victorian debutante who’s let the footman get her in the family way? Well, if money’s all that’s important to you—”

  “The money has nothing to do with it.”

  “Please. Is your nose itching? Or did you already scratch it?”

  “Neither,” Tristan lied once more, scratching his nose again and wishing neither of them had ever attended that body language workshop. “All right. It’s not just the money. It’s time I got out in the real world. Recognised my responsibilities.”

  “I’ve heard all those lines before, darling, and your delivery remains less than convincing. In any case, the theatrical world seems perfectly real to me. Particularly while I’m restraining myself from strangling your successor. And what responsibilities? Unless you’ve suddenly acquired a wife and an unspecified number of children to support, I can’t recall a single one. You haven’t even got a pet.”

  “Actually, that last may no longer be entirely true…” Scanning the kitchen, Tristan saw no signs of Meggie the Second or even Froggy the First, and forced himself to focus. “But anyway, as Father has graciously pointed out, I’ve had an extremely expensive education and upbringing and he’s yet to see any return on his investment.”

  “So children are an investment, now? I suppose investing in property is rather last-century. Tell me, how much of a return does he expect on his money? Ten percent? Twenty? More? What happens if you fail to realise that? Will he strip your assets and leave you to the bankruptcy courts?”

  “Ouch. Suki, darling. You don’t know what it’s like. Goldsmith and Klein is Father’s life. He needs to know it’ll be in safe hands when he retires.”

  “Which rather begs the question, why put it in yours? No, listen,” she went on immediately over Tristan’s outraged spluttering. “Why not get in someone to head up the company who actually has a flair for that sort of thing? Someone who’ll actually enjoy it? Because I know you, darling. You’ll hate every single tedious minute of it.” There was the rasping click of a cigarette lighter as Suki lit up again. Tristan was hit with a vivid sense memory as smoky aromas flooded his nostrils—no, wait, that was the pizza. Stretching the cord to its utmost, Tristan managed to turn off the oven. Oops.

  God, he missed Suki. He even missed the smell of her vile French cigarettes, and all the companionable times they’d huddled by the stage door as he kept her company while she smoked to stave off hunger pangs. Staying thin was apparently much harder once one passed thirty, darling, and Suki took her art seriously.

  Amanda had never joined them—in fact, she’d generally told Tristan he was ruining his voice for nothing and then complained vociferously if the merest whiff of cigarette smoke clung to either of them when they returned. Tristan had strongly suspected, however, that it was less to do with preserving her vocal cords—admittedly a valid concern—and more to do with the intense mutual loathing that had, regrettably, sprung up between her and Suki almost the moment they’d met.

  “You know the young me,” Tristan protested. “The now me. After a couple of years I’ll… I’ll settle into it. There’s no reason I shouldn’t develop a flair for business. Get to like it, even.”

  “Seems like a poor trade for a career you have a real passion for. And since when are you in such a rush to get old?”

  “Not to get old. T
o… To mature. I can’t just carry on having fun all my life.”

  “Can’t you? I think I’ve discerned who’s writing your scripts, darling. It’s your little drama college chum again, isn’t it? Dear, sulky, little Hamanda. How is she these days? Still bragging about the salary she’s earning in Hong Kong?”

  “Amanda,” Tristan corrected, “is perfectly well. Shall I remember you to her next time we Skype?”

  “Oh, lord. The evils of technology. Heaven forbid, darling. She might hire some Chinese hag to put a curse on me from afar. But why you should continue to be affected by the jealous ramblings of someone who simply couldn’t hack it in the profession—”

  “Amanda’s a dear friend,” Tristan said stiffly. “I don’t know how I’d have got through my MA if she hadn’t befriended me.”

  “So you said when you charmed me into hiring her, but the evidence has so far failed to convince. I cracked open a bottle of bubbly when she announced she was leaving—then had to drown my sorrows with it when you told me she’d somehow persuaded you to follow her.”

  “It wasn’t all down to Amanda. Father had been on at me for ages to get a proper job.”

  “And you’d ignored him, as well you should. Do you really think he’ll start respecting you now that you’ve done what he told you to?”

  Tristan winced. Suki’s aim was as good as ever, and her arrows as barbed.

  “In any case,” she went on, “I see absolutely no reason why one shouldn’t keep having fun all one’s life. I certainly intend to. Tomorrow we may all be dead, darling, so let us gather us rosebuds while we may.”

  “Rosebuds wither,” Tristan reminded her, a sharp edge to his voice.

  “So will you, darling, trapped in a desk job. So will you.”

  Three hours later, his stomach still weighed down with somewhat singed pizza, Tristan found himself still unable to settle. He’d packed up three more boxes of Nanna Geary’s worldly goods—small ones, admittedly, but still, three—and taken half a dozen to the local charity shop. Well, one of them. Bishops Langley seemed to be one of those places with a somewhat split personality: the High Street was composed almost entirely of high-end women’s clothiers dotted in between charity emporia staffed by grey-haired old ladies. Tristan wondered if any of the middle-class ladies who shopped at JoJo Maman-Bebe and Country Casuals ever stepped into one of those cheerful little shops with their eclectic stock and jumble-sale smell by mistake and fainted on the doorstep, perhaps having to be revived with a cup of Earl Grey.