Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  I practised what I might say – great to talk to you yesterday, how’s the ankle, listen, hey, I wondered … I may even have muttered the words out loud, experimenting with can we get coffee?, trying to shed the American drawl. Get coffee? Go for coffee? Have coffee? Cup of coffee? If ‘coffee’ was going to cause this much angst, perhaps I should just ask her for tea, but come for tea was something people in bonnets said. Tea was insipid and sexless, and coffee was the darker, more intoxicating beverage. They did cafetières at the Cottage Loaf Tea Rooms, and I imagined Fran chin in hand, toying with a sugar-cube as I told some story, then tossing her head with sudden laughter while I pushed down the plunger like a detonator. Hey, shall we go on somewhere else, get a proper drink?

  But where would we go? We certainly couldn’t come here, with the children’s bunk beds and the resident nervous breakdown on our sofa, and Fran Fisher was not the kind of girl you took to the swings in Dog Shit Park, with or without cider. Was it ungentlemanly to offer her cider? An imported lager perhaps, something posh, not a can? Should I put some vodka into a screw-top bottle? Tea or coffee, lager or vodka, bottle or can? I fell asleep at six and woke to the alarm at eight, got out of bed and showered, straining not to wake Dad, willing the water to fall quietly, then shaved with the care of a surgeon. I reached for the Lynx, the variety called ‘Aztec’ (‘So this is what wiped them out,’ Dad would say, sniffing the air), and sprayed the best part of a can, enough to give each armpit a coat as thick as the icing on a wedding cake. It crackled as I lowered my arm.

  Wedging my feet beneath the edge of the bunk bed prison-style, I resolved to do fifty sit-ups in the hope of instant results, and managed twenty, scuffing my head on the skirting board with each one. I folded two slices of toast into my mouth and wrote a hasty note, saying that I’d be gone all day but with no further explanation – how could I explain? – then mounted my bike and retraced my journey out of Thackeray Crescent, Forster then Kipling Road, down Woolf then Gaskell, Brontë and then Thomas Hardy Avenue, around the ring road and over the roar of the rush-hour motorway. On the outskirts, a municipal white sign marked the town’s limits, along with its frank motto, ‘A Good Town’ (in Latin, Bonum Oppidum), which was about as much as they could plausibly get away with.

  I cycled on silent roads, past the poly-tunnels and through the wheat fields, the direction less certain now. I turned too early, retraced my route, paused opposite a concrete bus shelter, a lane shaded with low branches. I crossed the road and began to climb.

  The day was already hot, the sun slicing through the canopy of trees. Ascending the lane, panting and gasping, I saw the footpath but wanted to make a more official entrance and so continued to climb until I saw a small mock-Tudor gatehouse. Beyond two five-bar gates a driveway curved through woodland, screening the house from the lane. ‘Fawley Manor’, read the plaque. I stood on the pedals but the gravel shifted beneath the wheels and I gave up and walked. The driveway followed the edge of a wood, then widened, opening out onto a lawn between ancient yews.

  It was a typical home-counties mansion, a greatest-hits medley from the last thousand years of architecture – columns and porticoes, diamond-leaded double-glazing, 1930s pebble-dash between stick-on Tudor beams, a satellite dish sprouting from the ivy. If I’d been more knowledgeable, I might have felt less impressed but I only saw its size, its isolation and apparent age. I’d never felt more like a trespasser, fully expecting the crunch of the gravel to alert the hounds. Looking for somewhere to leave my bike, I took in the ornamental goldfish pond, abandoned croquet mallets, a dovecote, all this grandeur marred only by a decrepit Transit van with two masks above a flourished ribbon painted on its flank, both masks laughing above the words ‘Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative’. Out of the rear doors tumbled a figure, dragging two large netted sacks. I froze but Ivor saw me and immediately bounded over, a sack on each shoulder.

  ‘Hulloooo. It’s our mystery man from yesterday! I knew it, I knew you’d be compelled to return. Just dump your bike there, it’s perfectly safe, and take one of these, will you?’ The string sack was packed with foam footballs, beanbags, juggling pins and, alarmingly, assorted hats. ‘Hate to be a wanker, but I’ve forgotten your name.’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Knew it was something like that. Charlie or Charles? Not a Chuck, are you? You don’t seem the Chuck type.’

  ‘Charlie.’

  ‘Okay, Charlie, let’s go!’ He showed the way with a flap of his hair. ‘Have you done a lot of theatre?’

  ‘No, this is … I’m just … it’s a new thing for me. I’m just trying it out.’

  ‘Fresh meat! Well, you’ll love it, I know you will. Come, join us!’

  We headed towards a sound, a slow, rhythmic slapping and clapping, crossing the courtyard and coming out onto the wide, green expanse, bracketed by what I suppose must have been the east and west wings.

  ‘The Great Lawn, where we’re creating our fair Verona. Hard to believe, I know, but you wait and see – and here they are!’

  The company sat in a large circle, their legs crossed, slapping their thighs and clapping their hands in a solid 4/4, the rhythm stumbling as I approached. In quick succession I saw Lucy Tran scowl and whisper to Colin Smart, lynch-pin of Merton Grange’s shadowy Drama Society, who sat open-mouthed with surprise. I saw Helen Beavis grinning and shaking her head, and there in profile, laughing with some boy, was Frances Fisher. She smiled brightly, mouthed, ‘You came!’ or maybe ‘Hooray!’, but I looked away. This would be my policy: aloof, blasé, just a guy who feels like some Theatre Sports, that’s all.

  ‘Okay, quiet everyone, quiet down. Eyes on me! Eyes! I want to see all those eyes, people!’ Fingers in a V, Ivor pointed to his eyes. ‘Okay, I’m pleased to say we have a late addition to the company. ‘Everyone say hellooo to Charlie, Charlie …’

  ‘Lewis.’

  ‘Hello, Charlie Lewis!’ they chorused and, head down, I raised one hand and squeezed between strangers in the circle.

  ‘We don’t know who Charlie’s going to be playing as yet; we’re going to talk about that later. For now, we’re going to do some exercises, yes? Yes?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Then this afternoon, Alina is going to talk to us about movement!’

  Alina planted her hands on her knees and set her elbows at ninety degrees. ‘We’re going to talk about how we carry ourselves, about how we hold ourselves, independently and in relation to each other, how we breathe, how we move through this world, present and alive, responding naturally and spontaneously to others. Because we don’t just talk to each other with words, do we? We can say something without opening our mouths. We communicate with our bodies, our faces, and even when we don’t move –’ She froze, and in a whisper, ‘We. Still. Move.’

  Under normal circumstances, I’d have found someone to scoff with, but scanning the circle I saw earnest, spellbound faces. Only Lucy Tran met my eye, glaring at me with telekinetic force, talking without words. You do not belong here, she seemed to say, you are behind enemy lines in a stolen uniform, and you will be found out. If I sprinted back to my bike, I could be away in thirty, perhaps twenty seconds, but turning back, I caught a look from Fran. She smiled and for a moment I thought I saw her cross her eyes. I laughed and the next thing I knew we were all on our feet, shaking all the tension from our hands – shake, shake, shake, shake it out – and then the beanbags really began to fly.

  We played Catchy-Come-Catch and the Parrot Game. We played Follow My Nose and Scuttlefish and Fruit Bowl. We played Anyone Who? and Orange Orang-utan and Zip, Zap, Zop and Keeper of the Keys, then Chase the Chain and Panic Attack, That’s Not My Hat and Hello Little Doggy and while the others laughed and joked and threw themselves around, I strived for an air of world-weary detachment, like the older brother at a children’s birthday party. A phone number was all I wanted. I even had a pen in my pocket and every now and then it poked me in the groin to remind me. A phone number, and I’d trouble these people no
more.

  But it’s hard to remain cool through a game of Yes, No, Banana and all too soon we were shaking it out again, shake, shake, shake, and then getting into pairs and pretending to be mirrors. I glanced over to see Fran pairing up with Colin Smart, the palms of their hands pressed together, while in my own mirror, I found a middle-aged man, large, red-nosed and rosy-cheeked like the life-size jolly butcher outside the local shop. ‘Hello, I’m Keith. You’re the mirror.’ He hoisted and shook his tracksuit bottoms to settle the contents as the exercise began. ‘I’m playing Friar Laurence,’ he whispered from the side of his mouth, placing one finger, then another on his nose. I did the same. ‘Because of this, probably …’ He placed one hand on his head, which was bald but with a fringe of hair, the tonsure of a movie monk. I copied. ‘Been drafted in from the Lakeside Players. You seen any Lakeside shows? Fiddler on the Roof? Witness for the Prosecution?’ He let his jaw hang slack and tapped a rhythm on his cheeks, and I did the same. ‘Not sure what I think of all this touchy-feely stuff. At Lakeside, we’d have blocked the first three acts by now. But you’ve got to go with it.’ Our noses were touching now and I could smell the coffee on his breath. ‘Got to keep an open mind, haven’t you?’

  ‘No talking, please! If you talk, your mirror has to talk!’

  Keith slapped his cheeks, tugged his ears, put his fingers up his nose and I thought, why can’t my reflection just stand still? What if she sees me?

  ‘Okay, get into different pairs, please!’

  But she didn’t see me, or even glance my way and instead I was thrown into the next act of enforced intimacy, this time with a boy called Alex: black, very tall, skinny with the world-weary sophistication and maturity of the sixth-former. This exercise was sculptor and model. Alex looked me up and down.

  ‘I think, Charlie,’ he said, ‘we’re going to get the best results here if I pose you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Don’t resist me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re resisting, you’ve got to bend and stay there.’

  ‘I’m trying!’

  ‘You’re pushing back.’

  ‘Not on purpose. I’m trying not to—’

  ‘My God, the tension in your neck …’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘… like knotted rope.’ He probed with his thumbs.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Am I making you tense?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then relax!’

  ‘I’ve just not done a lot of this kind of thing.’

  ‘No, I got that,’ he said, pinching my calves.

  ‘Maybe I could be one of those mannequins that just … lies on the floor.’

  ‘And where’s the fun in that? Besides, I’m the sculptor here. Let it go! Do as I say!’

  ‘Okay,’ said Ivor, clapping his hands. ‘Sculptors, let’s see your work! Alex and Charlie first.’

  They gathered round. I was Eros, tottering on one leg, bow and arrow in hand and able, from the corner of my eye, to see Fran and Helen Beavis both holding their chins, nodding, judging.

  ‘Ten minutes, everyone! Ten minutes, please!’

  In the courtyard, the company gathered round the tea-urn, laughing and joking. In my imagined version of the day, I might have strolled across, said hello and folded into the group, but self-confidence was not a switch that could be thrown and in reality the journey seemed too treacherous and fraught, the distance immense. Perhaps I’d be admitted, perhaps I’d find myself ricocheting off the edge, spinning out into the void. Best to stand here, eyes fixed on the plastic cup of water in my hand.

  Standing still brought danger too and so I began to stroll around the edge of the courtyard with my cup, taking in the architecture like a tourist circling a cathedral. In my peripheral vision, I saw someone break off from the group and approach at speed, the older woman who had tutted at me the day before. Now her hand was on my forearm as she grinned widely and alarmingly with neat, white teeth that looked younger than the mouth they occupied, bright, wide eyes and lines like the cracks in an oil painting, the ravages of deep tans and yacht excursions. ‘Hello, mystery man,’ she whispered, her voice low and smoky. She must have been seventy, quite tiny, her white hair cropped and brushed forward, a white, long-sleeved leotard visible under some sort of airy white muslin smock, like the ghost of a yoga instructor. ‘When it comes to the morning biscuits, it’s dog eat dog, I’m afraid. You have to be quick.’

  ‘I’m all right, thank you.’

  ‘Well you look terribly moody and charismatic, standing all alone, like someone from Chekhov. I’m sure that’s your intention, but wouldn’t you rather join in?’

  ‘No, I was just looking at the –’ I indicated a window, a drainpipe.

  ‘The house. Yes, it’s a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. The main part’s Jacobean, but there’s all this other stuff just … glued on.’

  ‘I’ve seen it from town. I always thought it was a mental home or something.’

  She laughed. ‘Well I suppose it is, in a way. You see, we live here.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s quite all right, you’re not to know. I’m Polly, that’s my husband over there, Bernard –’ A tall man, military in his bearing, was pouring water into the tea-urn from a plastic bucket. ‘Would you like the tour?’ No one had ever declined the tour, and so she looped her arm through mine. ‘We’ve lived here all our lives, though it’s just the two of us now. Without the children, it started to feel rather big, which is why it’s so lovely to see all you young people here. Ivor’s our nephew. This is our second year. We did the Dream last year, did you see it? When we heard that he was setting up his little company, we thought – why not! There’s only one condition, I said, I demand a role! I used to act when I was younger, you see. Ivor went quite pale, I think he thought I might ask for Titania, but no, I was Hippolyta – very dreary – but this year I’m the Nurse. It’s the part I was born to play. I’m doing her east London. “Even aw odd, ov awl days in da year, com Lammas Eve shall shee bee four-een”. I toyed with doing it Glaswegian, but that’s a terribly hard accent – even some Glaswegians can’t quite pull it off – so for the moment at least am doin it loik vis. Of course Ivor and Alina have got some very esoteric plans for the production. “Concepts” – is that the word? I’m sure it’s going to be set in deep space or a Venezuelan bus depot or something and I do worry that there’s going to be an excess of movement. Not just normal walking, the other kind. I have a particular distrust of mime, because why mime a jug when you’ve got a cupboard full of the things? My main hope is that we won’t cut the text, because what is Shakespeare if he’s not the language?’

  We agreed, Shakespeare was the language. She was, she said, ‘a Shakespeare nut’. Apart from suggesting that he was the first rapper, there was little I could add, and no need because Polly barely paused for breath as we toured the orangery, the rose garden, the rockery and something called the grotto, a hollow concrete sandcastle the size of a family car, embedded patchily with sea-shells. In her low, cracked voice, she asked – do you have a dream Shakespearean role? Where did you go to school? None of the answers were in my favour, but I did notice that my own voice had become that of a nice young man, polite and well spoken, with no hint of irritation as my chances of getting the phone number slipped away. By the time the tour was complete, Fran was in conversation with a handsome, shaggy-haired boy, their heads too close together, his hand on her shoulder …

  ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ sighed Polly. ‘Don’t they look a picture? D’you think they’ll fall deeply in love in real life? I believe that’s the tradition, at least for the length of the production. Method and all that.’

  ‘Right, everyone!’ shouted Ivor, juggling. ‘Back to work!’

  Games with balls, games with bamboo sticks, games with blindfolds and handkerchiefs and hats. We climbed a cliff face on the floor and curled like dried leaves on a bonfire, clambered on each other’s sweaty backs and moul
ded our partners’ faces like clay with our grubby fingers and all the time I wrestled with the paradox of how to do these things and not do them at the same time. Then games with language, stories built one word at a time –

  Once –

  Upon –

  The –

  Ocean –

  There –

  Tangoed –

  Twelve –

  Kumquats!

  And it was maddening, the way each time we were approaching something sensible and coherent, someone would throw in something mad and nonsensical and send it off into idiocy …

  I –

  Tickle –

  Everybody –

  Who –

  Smells –

  Soporifically –

  Of –

  Wombats!

  And they’d be off in hysterics again. Artichoke–Telephone–Shampoo! Dromedary–Ladder–Bin! God, these people loved this stuff, and it confirmed something that I’d long suspected: that within a theatrical environment, people really will laugh at any old crap.

  ‘Okay, everyone, shake it out! Shake, shake, shake! Lunchtime!’

  This time I would not fail. I timed my walk with care, hand on the pen in my pocket. In the courtyard, Fran stood by herself at the table, but—

  ‘Charles Lewis, why are you here?’ Helen Beavis held me by the elbow. ‘As if I didn’t know. Christ, you’re predictable.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Sniffing around that perfectly nice girl.’

  ‘Actually, it’s nothing to do with her, Helen.’

  ‘Ha! Yeah, you’re here because of your interest in Theatre Sports!’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m doing the set! Production design. I did it last year, it was fun; I’m not ashamed, I’m interested, I’m nurturing my skills. What I’m not doing, Lewis, is wasting everyone’s time.’