Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  I should recount one other incident, at the climax of the conflict that had preceded Mum’s departure in the spring. The row that night had been apocalyptic: accusations, recriminations, brutal character assessments dripping with contempt, things that could never be unsaid and which would make any future life together quite impossible. I’d retreated to my room to revise, or rather to stare blindly and uncomprehendingly at my textbooks, fingertips drilling at my temples. My sister, in the bunk bed behind me, had taken to wearing Dad’s large expensive headphones in order to muddy the worst of the words, but tonight the flimsy membrane of our bedroom floor was vibrating like a speaker. The effect must have been the same for our neighbours too, because for the first time someone actually called the police.

  Billie saw the blue light first. We stepped out onto the landing, and watched from the top of the stairs as my father, astonished and humiliated, opened the door and showed the police into the living room. My parents stood next to each other like children caught in some act of vandalism. Had it really come to this? Were we really that family, the one the neighbours complained about? The voices downstairs were placating now, No, officer, we quite understand, we’re all right now and I wanted to scream down the stairs, no, they’re not all right, they’re like this all the time! Instead I stomped into the bathroom, loud enough for the officers to hear, clattered through the cabinet to find the aspirin, slammed the cupboard door shut, pressed two into my hand, then a third, then paused. I opened the cupboard door once more, sorting through the tubes of lotions, the sticky bottles of ancient syrup, and found a brown bottle of liquid paracetamol. I tossed the pills into my mouth with a swig of filthy liquid, craned my head under the tap to wash it all down and then, for good effect, unscrewed the lid of the same night-time cough medicine I’d taken as a toddler, several years past its sell-by date and so presumably all the more concentrated and toxic. Hearing the door close on the police downstairs, I swigged at this too, wincing at the chemical sweetness, then arranged the packaging on the toilet cistern, the brown bottle left on its side for effect, a little diorama of despairing protest. Below us, my parents were speaking in sharp, urgent whispers. My sister lay on the top bunk, feigning sleep. I lay down beneath her, my hands clasped on my chest in anticipation, like a figure on a tomb.

  This scene took place just before my father was prescribed his own medication, and I wonder if I’d have had the nerve to unscrew the lids of those particular brown bottles. I doubt it. I contemplated suicide in the same way that I contemplated murder, as a kind of thought experiment, and if I ever pressed the dull edge of the butter knife against the blue vein in my wrist, then it was in the same spirit as imagining where I’d bury Chris Lloyd’s body. Even as I gulped down the ancient cough syrup I knew that expectorants were rarely fatal. The concern and remorse of my parents, this was the main aim. To pull themselves together, to remain together.

  But in the morning I woke with embarrassment and regret, and rushed to the bathroom to find Mum waiting, the blister pack of pills in one hand, the sticky bottle held by the fingertips of the other.

  ‘Charlie, is this you?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘So, Charlie, can I ask you not to leave stuff lying around like this?’ She tossed the syrup in the bin. ‘This is out of date. And if you’ve got a headache, take aspirin or paracetamol, not both. They’re not free. And put. Things. Away!’

  If such a blatant performance could go unnoticed, then something even more theatrical would be required. Fortunately, the perfect opportunity loomed just a few months away in the exam hall.

  Some, not all of this, I told Fran over the rest of the summer, but in the orchard I just confirmed the facts of my academic catastrophe.

  ‘F for fucked up. I just thought you ought to know.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘What do you think I ought to know?’

  ‘I don’t want you to think I’m something I’m not. That I’m going places that I can’t go.’

  ‘Okay. So you’re warning me off.’

  I shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, it’s true that I do usually like to know grades before I get to know someone. It’s a simple points-based system really, but if you do well in the practical and the interview—’

  ‘No, but if someone’s a screw-up—’

  ‘It’s continuous assessment, really.’

  ‘—or just dim—’

  ‘The only time that you sound dim,’ she said, ‘is when you say that you sound dim. Does that make sense?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  I’d closed my eyes again, draped my arm across my face, but still I felt the shadow fall and heard the movement in the leaves as she settled next to me.

  ‘Come out tonight,’ she said, taking my hand.

  ‘Just me and you?’

  ‘Nope, everyone. We’re all going out together.’

  ‘It’s not ideal.’

  ‘No. But don’t go away.’ From the house, the triangle sounded. ‘At the end of the night, don’t go anywhere without me, Charlie. It’s very important that you understand. Nowhere without me.’

  Masks

  The plywood box was shrouded with a cloth and carried into place by Chris and Chris with solemn reverence, as if it might be the Ark of the Covenant.

  ‘Okay, so this is a work in progress …’ said Helen.

  ‘I love this bit,’ said George. ‘It’s when it feels real.’

  ‘There’s still lots of work to do …’

  ‘Just show the model, Helen dear,’ said Alina.

  The cloth was tugged away to oohs and wows. I joined in. Chris and Chris were the kind of boys who haunted the aisles of Hobby Lobby, addicted to that particular pleasure of making tiny versions of very large things, and the model was exquisite, a miniature street corner in dusty white, skewed and twisted so that the buildings leant forward drunkenly. It was a masterpiece of balsa wood, moss and 000-brush work and we all leant forward while Helen stood over the scene like a puppeteer.

  ‘It’s kind of a modern Italian town but after the earthquake, the one in the play.’

  ‘’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,’ said Polly.

  ‘Exactly, so the buildings are all twisted, like it could all collapse at any moment. Too busy fighting to fix anything. It’s a metaphor – get it? There are balconies and walkways, but they’re sort of precarious. I mean they’ll be safe, we’re not going to kill any of you, but there’ll be stuff going on vertically. It’ll look solid, but it’s scaffolding and dust sheets mainly. We’re playing with the idea of laundry – cliché, I know – and for the interiors, we’ll pull the sheets tight like the sail of a yacht. See …’

  Helen pulled a string, and we applauded.

  ‘We’ve got these bulbs, bare bulbs, and we’ll string them from roof to roof like fairy lights for the party scene. And for the big fight in Act III, we were thinking about football in Italy, how the kids play in the town square and how when there’s a big international match they set up all these chairs at night and watch it like a community, and that’s how we want the fight to be, folding chairs flying around like you see on the news, and flares and fireworks being thrown – we’re still working on that – and for the Friar Laurence scenes, we’ll bring on this tree, dusty and white except for the leaves and it’ll be the only green you see on set because he’s sort of nature and herbs and gardens and, anyway, that’s where Romeo and Juliet get married. And this is what you’ll all look like …’

  She produced a stack of outsize playing cards.

  ‘The thing is, we want everyone to look cool.’

  ‘Thank God,’ said Alex.

  ‘And we thought red and blue was too obvious, because we want to make Charlie’s point that the differences are just in their head, and so Montagues are going to be this grey white, Capulets this kind of light blue. So – I’m really shit at drawing. You ready? Be nice to me, you bastards.’

  She
turned the first card. It was Fran, recognisably so, her shoulders bare in a pale grey shift, a nightdress or a shroud. The cards were passed round, revealing Miles as Romeo, chin in the air, his pale jacket slung over his shoulder, then the elder Capulets and Montagues in stiff, sharp suits and cocktail dresses and on and on through each company member, faces suggested with just a few lines. Each drawing made that particular cast member grin and laugh in recognition, in anticipation of striking that pose. ‘We’re mixing modern and a sort of vague sense of period, so you might have a nice suit jacket but sort of Elizabethan boots or jeans with a ruff, because we want it to be relevant, man, but also because that’s what everyone does now. Basically I’ve just ripped off every RSC production for the last twenty years.’

  Miles, who had barely registered Helen’s existence until now, held his own portrait at arm’s length as if appraising an Old Master. ‘Can I keep mine afterwards?’ he said, and Helen fought to hide her smile.

  Years later, going through old things, I found the picture that Helen had drawn of Benvolio, in little round glasses, listening. I’d not seen the portrait for many years and for the first time that day I laughed to myself. It was the kind of thing you see on the walls of every school art-room, in amongst the massive eyes, the pencil-shaded old shoes and self-portraits from reflections in a spoon. Even at the time I could see the nose was weird, the arms bent awkwardly and she really couldn’t ‘do’ hands, just trowels. But it was the first time that anyone had drawn me without a penis sprouting from my forehead and, rediscovering the card, I laughed because I remembered how much I’d loved it at the time, how proud my friend had been, and how we’d shared her pride.

  ‘This is going to be amazing!’ said Lucy, thrilled with all the red leather she’d be wearing.

  ‘Helen,’ I said, ‘you’re brilliant. I’d no idea.’

  ‘Piss off, Charlie,’ she said and blushed, another thing I didn’t know that she was capable of.

  ‘Big round of applause for the design team, please!’ said Ivor.

  Then, in case we were getting too comfortable, ‘Mask workshop, everyone!’ Alina called.

  The orchard had been transformed into a sort of harem, with rugs and pillows arranged beneath the trees, sheets of plain brown paper and pots of some sort of porridgey paste set beside each pillow. The masks were needed for the Capulet party scene.

  ‘This is also a relaxation exercise,’ said Alina, ‘so we are going to take our time. We are going to listen to the birds, to the insects, to the sounds the trees make. But more than that, it is about close forensic scrutiny of the face, and what we express even when we think we express nothing. Now – get into pairs.’

  ‘Get into pairs!’ shouted Ivor, three words that always caused a wave of panic, heightened by the necessity of showing no panic. Etiquette demanded that we refrain from simply hurling ourselves at people we fancied. Besides, a whole afternoon sticking little bits of damp paper to Fran’s face; it would have been too much. She had already joined arms with Alex, talent clinging to talent, leaving the rest of us looking around needily, each moment of glancing eye contact heavy with meaning. Like the lunge for a seat in musical chairs, the scuffle lasted for seconds. Polly the Nurse adopted Colin Smart, Helen latched on to Alina and seemed very pleased with this. Lucy clung to Miles’ arm and John and Lesley, our Burton and Taylor, stuck to what they knew. Keith, our Friar Laurence, always keen to associate with the younger members of the cast, was obliged to make do with Bernard, the ex-Guardsman now facing the prospect of his first mask workshop with grim forbearance.

  Only George and I remained.

  ‘I think this is called drawing the short straw.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, it’s fine. Do you want to go first?’’

  He removed his spectacles, the glass as thick as his finger. Without them, he seemed dazed and vulnerable and he blinked and placed them in his top pocket as if preparing to be blindfolded and shot.

  He sighed. ‘I suppose so.’

  Perhaps I’d imagined it, but I felt a certain affinity with George. He was reserved and watchful and though he rarely spoke, everyone listened when he did. In a rare moment of praise for someone else, Miles had revealed that George was ‘practically a genius’, a great writer, an invincible debater, a violinist that it was possible to listen to. Perhaps this was why we hadn’t spoken much, because what would I say to someone like that? Yet he rarely put these talents on display or used his intelligence as a stick to swipe at people. Instead he’d sit quietly and watch, one hand clamped to his chin or mouth, his forehead, the side of his nose, whichever part of his raw face caused him the most pain on that particular day. Watching his scenes in rehearsal, it seemed the role of Paris was to be a kind of anti-Romeo; the last person in the world that Juliet would want to be with – she would rather ‘see a toad, a very toad, than him’, says the Nurse, and marriage would be a fate literally worse than death. ‘O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, from off the battlements of any tower!’ says Juliet, and I thought how harsh casting could be, to look at a teenage boy and think yes, we have our toad.

  Elsewhere, an air of meditative concentration had fallen on the orchard, an atmosphere that Ivor was keen to enforce by playing his CD of chill-out music. With his head on the pillow, his fingers linked, his eyes, his every muscle clenched, it required clear effort for George not to place his hands over his face. ‘Christ’s sake.’ George exhaled through his nose. ‘Mask-making aside, I don’t think there’s anything in the world that makes me more tense than chill-out music.’

  ‘My dad calls it music for people who don’t like music.’

  ‘He’s a very smart man. What does your father do?’

  ‘He used to have a record shop. Now he’s unemployed, so – yours?’

  ‘Civil servant. Works in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘Okay. Shall we start?’

  ‘Please. Be my guest.’

  I began to conceal his face in glue-soaked paper, the technique familiar from primary school, covering balloons in papier mâché then popping them with a pin. Now George’s forehead was the balloon. ‘No need to apply grease,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hope it comes off. I don’t want you going home like this!’ I’d taken on a strained, jaunty tone, like a plucky nurse at a dressing station.

  ‘Of course the best thing for all concerned would be to get a bag. Just a brown paper bag, put my whole head in that.’

  I carried on silently.

  ‘Or bandages. Wrap the whole thing up like a mummy.’

  I applied the paper to the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Maybe when you take it off my skin’ll be miraculously clear. Maybe wallpaper paste is the cure I’ve been looking for—’

  ‘George, you’re meant to be silent.’

  ‘Am I? All right. Not a word.’

  ‘You’re meant to listen to the trees.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll listen to the trees.’

  I built up the layers of paper. We’d had boys like this at Merton Grange, their faces raw and scalded from scrubs and bleaches, hot flannels and astringents, boys who wore their school shirts at the weekend and too many clothes in summer, boys who were clumsy and fearful, huddled together at lunchtime like Christians in the Colosseum. Were the torments at private school any more genteel? It seemed unlikely that he’d made it through unscathed.

  ‘How are you getting on with Fran?’

  The question startled me, and while I tried to contrive a reply, I glanced in her direction. Alex was sitting astride her chest, fitting his thumbs into the hollows of her eye sockets.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘You seem quite close.’

  ‘We’re getting that way.’

  ‘And you like her?’

  Perhaps it was the insidious effect of chill-out music, but the conversation was getting far too personal. ‘Yeah, of course,’ I murmured. ‘Everyone does.’

  ‘Charlie, I’m using the word “like” euphemistically here.’

&
nbsp; I stayed silent.

  George licked his lips. ‘What I mean is—’

  ‘I know what you mean. We’re not meant to be talking, George.’

  ‘But you do.’

  ‘Like her? Yeah, I really like her.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ It was true, I’d noticed how he spoke to Fran, quietly and intently, his fingers masking different parts of his face in turn. I noticed, too, the little puff of pride when he made her laugh, which was often, more often than I could manage.

  ‘I don’t mind, by the way. It’s not a competition. I think she likes you a lot.’

  ‘But is that “like” as a euphemism?’

  ‘You’ll find out, I suppose. Eventually.’

  We were silent again until half his face had disappeared. There was a pearl of white in the curve of his nostril and, to the side of his eye, a pimple so large that it changed the shape of his face. It seemed that it might be hot to the touch but I was determined not to hesitate, feeling, I suppose, very brave.

  ‘I’m sorry that you have to do this,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘It’s quite repulsive, I know.’

  ‘It’s not so bad.’

  ‘The whole thing, you shouldn’t have to touch it.’

  ‘Not true.’

  ‘I can feel it actually fizzing. You know, I sometimes think if I had a knife I’d cut my whole fucking face off,’ and here he grimaced so much that the drying paper crackled. I realised that I’d really need to find something else to say.

  ‘You have nice eyes.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what people say when they can’t think of anything—’