Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  ‘How do they know?’

  ‘They use a microscope,’ said Lloyd and punched me between the legs.

  So there was a palpable sense of disappointment as we took our seats in front of a florid, grinning young man with a great wing of hair across his eyes and an angular woman of the same age, her black hair pulled back tightly. In front of them, a beat-box cassette player sat like a dark threat.

  Mr Pascoe clapped his hands twice. ‘Settle down, everyone. Lloyd, does the term “everyone” include you or are you possessed of unique qualities hitherto undisclosed? No? Then settle down. Now. I’d like to introduce you to our special guests today; special in their achievements, special in their ambitions—’

  ‘Special in their needs,’ said Harper, and I laughed.

  ‘Lewis! Charles Lewis, what is wrong with you?’

  ‘Sorry, sir!’ I said, looked to the floor, then looked up again and noticed that the young man on stage was directing his grin towards me. He winked collaboratively. I hated that wink.

  ‘Our guests here are graduates of the University of Oxford! They’re here to tell you about a very exciting project, so please give a big Merton Grange welcome to … bear with me …’ He consulted his notes. ‘Ivor and Alina from …’ Another consultation. ‘The Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative!’

  Ivor and Alina bounded forwards with such force that their chairs skittered back across the parquet. ‘How are you doing, kids, all right?’ shouted Ivor, plump and wide-eyed like a spoilt King Charles Spaniel. Fine, we mumbled, but Ivor had the bumptious, cajoling demeanour we knew from kids’ TV. He cupped his ear. ‘I can’t hear you!’

  ‘’Course he can fucking hear us,’ said Fox. ‘It’s a trick.’

  ‘A ruse,’ said Lloyd, ‘a wily ruse.’

  ‘Let’s try it once again! How ya doing?’ We stayed quiet.

  ‘Oh, you sound so sad!’ said Alina, pulling down the corners of her mouth, tilting her head to one side.

  ‘Christ, there’s two of them,’ said Lloyd, but Alina had a European accent, Czech or Hungarian perhaps, which made her vampish and intriguing to us.

  ‘We’re here to tell you about a fantastic opportunity,’ said Ivor, ‘coming your way this summer; a great project we’re very excited about. Tell me – who here has heard of a Mr William Shakespeare? Is that all? Wow, you’re shy. Okay, let’s try this: who here has never heard of a Mr William Shakespeare? The Swan of Avon! The Bard! The Upstart Crow! You see – you’ve all heard of him!’

  ‘And who here can quote some Shakespeare for us?’ said Alina.

  One hand rocketed. Suki Jewell, the deputy head girl.

  ‘To be or not to be,’ whispered Harper.

  ‘To be or not to be!’ shouted Suki.

  ‘That is the question! Very good! Hamlet! Anyone else?’ From the front rows of the hall, the book-token kids were calling out:

  ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’

  ‘Is this a dagger!’

  ‘Now is the winter of our discontent!’

  ‘It is better to have loved and lost,’ shouted Suki Jewell, ‘than never to have loved at all.’

  Ivor frowned consolingly. ‘Actually, that’s Tennyson.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s Tennyson, you slag,’ said Lloyd.

  Now Alina took over. ‘Here’s the thing – did you know that we all use Shakespeare’s language, even when we don’t realise it!’ Dark-eyed, sharp-featured, hair scraped back harshly, Alina seemed less comfortable in her hoody and tracksuit, a ballet dancer absconding from an open prison. ‘Are you listening to me? Because I simply won’t speak if you are not listening. Very well, tell me – has anyone here heard the phrase “brave new world”? A few of you. Okay, how about break the ice, as in “hey, let’s break the ice at this party”?’

  ‘How about faint-hearted?’ said Ivor. ‘Or foregone conclusion?’

  ‘Did you know—’ said Alina.

  ‘No,’ said Fox.

  ‘—that when you use the phrase “method in my madness”, you’re quoting Will?’

  ‘Who the fuck says “method in my madness”?’ said Lloyd.

  ‘And when you tell a knock-knock joke, you’re quoting … the Scottish Play!’

  Ivor winked and whispered from behind his hand, ‘She means Macbeth!’ and Little Colin Smart from Drama Society laughed.

  ‘Oi! Smart,’ Lloyd hissed down the line. ‘Don’t laugh at that, you dick.’

  ‘Play fast and loose!’ said Alina.

  ‘In the mind’s eye!’ said Ivor.

  ‘Laughing stock!’

  ‘Love is blind!’

  ‘The milk of human kindness!’

  ‘F’fuck’s sake,’ said Harper, ‘you made your point.’

  But they were not done yet, because now Ivor crossed his arms and struck a pose while Alina pressed play on the tape deck. They crouched, hands on knees, faces close. A pause, uncomfortably long, and a thin hip-hop beat began. As we feared, it was another attempt to convince us that Shakespeare was the first rapper.

  ‘You’re dead as a doornail!’

  ‘To the crack of doom!’

  ‘You’ve eaten me out of house and home!’

  ‘It was a dish fit for the gods!’

  ‘We don’t even like rap,’ sighed Lloyd. ‘What makes them think we like rap?’

  ‘You play fast and loose!’

  ‘Had that one already,’ said Harper.

  ‘You set my teeth on edge!’

  ‘No, you set my teeth on edge,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘You’ve seen better days!’

  ‘I’ll kill you with kindness!’

  ‘Kill me with something,’ said Fox. ‘Please!’

  ‘You’re the Devil incarnate!’

  ‘Ha! Jealousy’s the green-eyed monster!’

  ‘These are literally the worst people in the world …’

  And now suddenly Mr Pascoe was on his feet. ‘Harper! Fox! Lloyd! What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Quoting Shakespeare, sir,’ said Fox.

  ‘There’s method in our madness, sir,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Outside. Now!’

  ‘Foregone conclusion,’ murmured Harper.

  ‘We’re a laughing stock,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘In one fell swoop,’ said Fox as the three of them squeezed past me, scraping chairs. Once the swing door had closed, Alina pressed stop and Ivor stepped forward once again.

  ‘So. Here’s the deal—’

  ‘There’s this play—’

  ‘It’s about gangs, it’s about violence, it’s about belonging and prejudice and love and …’ Ivor paused before delivering the punch-line: ‘… it’s about sex!’ He waited, head tilted, for the murmur to pass through the hall. ‘It’s a play by William Shakespeare. And it’s called—’

  ‘Romeo. And. Juliet. If you think you know all about it, trust me, you do not. The FFFTC will be putting it on here, this summer, in an exciting new venue.’

  ‘And you …’ Ivor stretched out both arms, two fingers of each hand pointed sideways, gangland-style ‘… are going to be the stars! Five weeks’ rehearsal, four shows. We’re going to learn to dance, we’re going to learn to fight—’

  ‘We are going to learn how to be,’ said Alina, scanning the rows with her dark eyes, and for the first time we were entirely silent and still. ‘How to be, both on stage and off. We are all going to learn a little about how to move through this world, both present and alive.’

  ‘Remember,’ said Ivor. ‘Full Fathom Five is not us, it’s you.’ He pressed his palms together, interlaced his fingers and rang his hands like a school bell. ‘We need you. We simply can’t do this without you.’

  ‘Please,’ said Alina. ‘Come. Join us.’

  ‘I haven’t come to join,’ I said now. I may even have shouted.

  ‘Okay,’ said Ivor. ‘But you don’t know what—’

  ‘Whatever this is, I’m not part of it, I was just helping her.’ I looked for the girl, who was standing at the table, spooning food
onto a paper plate. ‘I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Okay. You’re sure? Because we badly need young men.’

  ‘Yeah, not me. I’ve got to go. Sorry. Bye Lucy, Colin. Bye Helen,’ and before they could reply I was walking briskly from the courtyard, across the lawn and past the maze—

  ‘Hold on!’

  … leaping down behind the ha-ha for cover, storming onwards …

  ‘Excuse me! Can you wait a moment! Oh, for crying out loud …’

  … and I turned in time to see her hobbling towards me, a buckled paper plate sowing a trail of food. I waited at the gate. ‘Look,’ she said, laughing, ‘you’ve made me drop my couscous.’ She shook the last of the sandy stuff onto the grass. ‘Couscous on the ha-ha. Fucking hell, that’s just about the most bourgeois – anyway, I just wanted to say thank you. For helping me out.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t want to stay?’

  ‘I’m not an actor.’

  ‘Trust me, I’ve been here all week, and no one here is an actor, me included. It’s just … fun, you know? To start with it’s just Theatre Sports and improv. I realise that’s not selling it necessarily—’

  ‘I can’t really—’

  ‘I mean, “theatre” and “sports”, there’s two words you don’t want to see coupled together.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve got to—’

  ‘But we start on the play next week. It’s Romeo and Juliet.’

  ‘It’s not for me.’

  ‘Because it’s Shakespeare?’

  ‘This whole thing, it’s not my …’

  Don’t say ‘thing’ again.

  …

  …

  ‘Thing.’

  ‘Okay. Well. Shame. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too. Maybe I’ll see you around?’

  ‘You will if you come tomorrow! No? Okay.’ She began brushing at her bare leg. ‘Bloody couscous. I don’t even like couscous. Nine thirty if you change your mind. You won’t regret it. Or you might. What I mean is, you probably will regret it, but at least—’

  ‘Well, I’d better be—’

  ‘I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘Charlie. Lewis. Charlie Lewis.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Charlie Lewis.’

  ‘You too. So.’

  …

  …

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask my name?’

  ‘Sorry, you’re …?’

  ‘Fran. As in Frances, with an “e”, so Fran Fisher. What can I do, my parents are idiots; well, they’re not, but – anyway. Well, like I said. Thank you. Bye.’

  She turned and walked away, and I watched her folding the paper plate into a wedge and then tucking it into the pocket of her denim skirt. Then she turned back, confirming what she must have known, that I would be watching her.

  ‘Bye, Charlie Lewis!’

  I raised my hand and she did too, but I never did go back and that was the last time I ever saw Fran Fisher.

  I wonder where she is now?

  First Sight

  I know where she is now. I did go back, because it was inconceivable that I would not see that face again and if doing so meant half a day of Theatre Sports, then that was the price I’d pay.

  But perhaps that’s not quite true either. Perhaps I’d have forgotten her soon enough. When these stories – love stories – are told, it’s hard not to ascribe meaning and inevitability to entirely innocuous chance events. We literally romanticise; one glance and something changed, a flame was ignited, cogs interlocking in some great celestial device. But the ‘love’ in ‘love at first sight’ is, I suspect, only applied in retrospect, laid on like an orchestral score when the outcome of the story is known and the looks and smiles and hands brushing against each other can be allocated a significance that they rarely carry in the moment.

  It’s true that I thought she was lovely, but I thought this about someone five to ten times on any given day and even alone, I thought it while watching TV. It’s true that during our first encounter a clear, insistent voice in my head had told me concentrate, this will matter, concentrate, and true, too, that part of this was probably just sex, the noise of which underscored almost any conversation that I had with a girl at that time, like a car alarm that no one can turn off. Part of it was a less torrid, more conventionally romantic vision, a momentary flash-forward to a montage – holding hands, browsing in WHSmith or laughing on the swings in Dog Shit Park – and I wondered what that would look like and feel like, all that company.

  I had never in my life, before or since, been more primed to fall in love. Catching that fever, I felt sure, would inoculate me against all other worries and fears. I longed for change, for something to happen, some adventure, and falling in love seemed more accessible than, say, solving a murder. But even though I thought she was lovely, I was not touched by some wand, there was no flourish on the harp and no change in the lighting. If I’d been busier that summer, or happier at home, then I might not have thought about her so much, but I was neither busy nor happy, and so I fell.

  I remember worrying that I wouldn’t be able to remember her face. Freewheeling at great speed through the strobing light of that wooded lane, straight in the saddle, wind whipping at my chest, I tried to pair what I could recall with someone familiar, someone off the telly whose face I might use as a template. But no one quite fitted and before I’d reached the junction and turned towards town, her face had begun to fade like an unfixed photograph – shape of nose, shade of blue, chipped tooth, the great curve of her skull, the precise constellation of spots and freckles; how would I remember? I had a corny idea that I might draw her as soon as I got home – a few lines, a gesture, the way she tugged at the back of her denim skirt or stored her fringe behind her ear. Until then I’d focused mainly on zombies and alien insects. Perhaps Fran Fisher was my first worthy subject, the ‘something real’ that Helen had told me to draw, and I continued to summon up her features in turn in the same way that you might try to memorise a phone number – shape of nose, shade of blue, chipped tooth, the curve of, constellation of—

  Phone number. Why hadn’t I just asked for her phone number? That was what I needed. I’d get it the next time I saw her.

  Next time.

  I remember feeling a great surge of jealousy towards her boyfriend, without knowing who he was or if he existed. Surely she must have one, because all Chatsborne girls came with a boyfriend of equal beauty and status, constantly doing it in their parents’ pools or at drug-fuelled sleepless sleepovers. There were kids at Merton Grange who had ‘relationships’, but they’d quickly settled into a sort of parody of domesticity, tea on laps in front of the TV, walking around the shops, as if trapped in a particularly committed game of Mums and Dads. Chatsborne kids, on the other hand, were decadent, wild and free like the gilded youth of Logan’s Run or foreign-exchange students. Of all the markers on the road to adulthood – voting, driving a car, legal drinking – the most elusive for a Merton Grange boy was to see a bra-strap without pinging it. To not be a dick: this was the great rite of passage that we had yet to pass through. Even if she were single, why would Fran Fisher be interested in a boy like that, like me?

  Finally, there was the realisation that any emotions I might have experimentally labelled ‘love’ were as irrelevant and obsolete as a box of childhood toys. Becky Boyne, Sharon Findlay, Emily Joyce – what had I been thinking? This was an entirely new emotion, and if it was still too early to call it love, then I was prepared to call it hope.

  None of this could be said out loud – who to? – and neither did I have much time to dwell on it because as I turned back into Thackeray Crescent I saw the red of the brand-new Mini, with my sister Billie’s face in the back window, looking up from her book.

  Mum had come to visit.

  Mum

  When I was small – when the story still seemed credible – my parents used to tell me how they’d fallen in love. They were students, my mother training to be
a nurse, my father halfway through an accountancy course that he had more or less abandoned in order to play saxophone in college bands of variable quality, in this case Goitre, a punk-funk, or funk-punk, five-piece, playing their first and last ever gig at the student union of Portsmouth Polytechnic. Punk and funk, it seemed, were proving incompatible but in the moments when she’d not been looking at the floor, my mother had spotted the one band member who’d had the sense to be embarrassed: the saxophonist. She laughed at the satirical faces he pulled behind the lead singer’s back and noted, too, that he was capable of playing his instrument, so made a point of digging in next to him at the bar where he stood hunched, wiping madly at his eye-liner with the corner of a beer towel like someone hurriedly removing a disguise. She held him by the arm. ‘That,’ she said, ‘was just … awful,’ and he looked at her closely for a moment and laughed. ‘And that was it,’ my father used to tell me, ‘love at first sight,’ and my mum would groan and roll her eyes and throw a cushion, but still, I loved the story: Mum stood next to Dad at the bar and so I came to be.

  There’s a photograph of them, taken shortly after that first meeting, with matching cigarettes and leather jackets on a fire escape in the only part of Gosport to resemble the East Village. Short, her black eyes peering through a black fringe, my mother looks ferocious and unstoppable and Dad stands behind her, cigarette held high as if writing her name in the air above her head, laughing with his ragged teeth; my God, look at this amazing woman. All couples should have a photo like this, the sleeve of their imaginary album. They seem invincible, full of fire and hope for their shared future.