Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  ‘Look, George, I don’t know what to say. This is weird for me too, but I think you’ve got a really nice face, all right? It’s … expressive.’ This was, I think, the strangest thing I’d said to another human being at that time. A moment passed.

  ‘You’re right,’ said George, ‘we really ought to do this in silence.’

  Another moment.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and then we stopped speaking altogether, until it was done. When the mask was dry enough, I eased my fingers beneath the paper and it came away with a satisfying sucking sound. George rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands and took a cursory look. ‘Relief map of the Andes,’ he said. ‘Get it out of my sight.’ I placed the mask with the others and took my turn.

  The whole process took two plays of the chill-out compilation and afterwards, we all stood blurry-eyed, rubbing at the gum that still lurked in corners and creases, and inspected the gallery of faces baking in the sun like some bizarre crop.

  ‘Well, that was kinky,’ said Helen.

  ‘Don’t you all look splendid,’ said Polly.

  ‘What a bunch of freaks,’ said Alex.

  ‘Mine’s amazing,’ said Miles.

  ‘The one you made, or the one of you?’ I asked.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Miles!’ said Fran.

  ‘What an interesting collection of personalities,’ said Polly.

  ‘I think we’re all beautiful,’ said Colin.

  ‘Oh, Colin, please,’ said Alex.

  ‘Death masks,’ said George.

  ‘It’s like a serial killer’s basement,’ said Fran. I sought out her mask from the others. It seemed to me like some rare and wonderful artefact from a museum, one that I very much wanted to steal.

  ‘Charlie,’ whispered Helen, ‘we must not tell anyone, ever, ever, what we just did.’

  ‘Okay, well done everyone,’ said Ivor. ‘A good week’s work. But Monday – that’s when we take things up a gear! Two and a half weeks until dress rehearsal. Long days and I need everyone off-book and on the ball. Be here on time, people! See you on Monday. Now go. Disperse! Disperse!’

  But something had changed. No one wanted to leave and we loitered idly on the driveway, waiting for a plan to materialise, some way to stretch the day.

  ‘That’s it. We’re going to The Angler’s,’ said Fran, taking my arm. ‘Remember – nowhere without me.’

  The Angler’s

  Of the local pubs that catered for the underage drinker, The Angler’s was the smartest. You were more likely to get served in The Hammer and Tongs, a speakeasy where it was not uncommon to see customers in school uniform, ties loosened, satchels tucked under the table. But The Hammer was the fightiest of the town’s pubs and drinking there was a nerve-jangling experience.

  The Angler’s was an altogether classier proposition, a new-build Tudor farmhouse at the edge of town, whitewashed and freshly thatched; a destination pub with a large car park. The ceilings were authentically low, the artificial timbers exposed and, on Sunday, families would cram into inglenooks and cubbyholes to gorge on the famous all-you-can-eat carvery, a festival of bottomless meat with two different kinds of gravy, dark and light. In happier times, Mum and Dad would take us and we’d sit and dehydrate on crisps and pink stringy ham, Britvic 55 and great mounds of fat chips. Now its great selling point for the younger drinker was the beer garden, a paddock of scuffed lawn that sloped down to an artificial lake – a large pond really – around which foul-tempered anglers – the eponymous anglers, I suppose – hunched late into the evening, drinking pints and glaring at any youth who dared come near and ‘scare the fish’. That spring, on weekday evenings when we should have been revising, I would sometimes come here with Harper, shivering against the evening chill, topping up our innocent Cokes with the bottle of rum concealed in his jacket pocket. At no point did we think any of this was wrong or foolish. Laws were guidelines and the age-eighteen rule was only there to keep the fourteen-year-olds out. An informal understanding had been reached: as long as we stuck to the holding pen at the back, we were fine.

  And that’s where we found ourselves on that Friday, every single member, young and old, of the Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative ranged around two wooden picnic tables that we hauled together across the dusty lawn. In the spirit of responsibility, Ivor refused to buy anything stronger than a half of shandy for the younger members, and so we were obliged to drink them twice as quickly and, with nothing to eat but two baskets of undercooked chips, the volume of conversation soon began to creep up. It was that time of our lives, and an era too, when all conversation aspired to stand-up comedy, and so I told Helen, Fran and Alex the story of my Shakespearean improv session – with love, my experience hath been both hit and miss – and felt gratified at their laughter. The more we drank, the easier the laughter came until, at a certain point of drunkenness, a switch was flicked and the conversation turned confessional.

  So – Keith, it seemed, was in the throes of a miserable separation, his own fault, after a fling with a fellow cast member from last year’s Fiddler on the Roof, a girl playing his daughter, would you believe (‘Tradition!’ shouted Alex), but he still loved his wife, still wanted her to take him back, and Lucy was telling Miles about the pressure she felt to achieve top marks and Miles was saying, yes, I know what that’s like, because if he wasn’t the best at something, he had to have a bloody good reason why not, and Colin Smart, who we’d always dismissed as a dull and feeble swot, had revealed his brother was in a young offenders’ unit for dealing drugs and before I could even take this in, Polly, some way through a bottle of white wine, was saying how lonely she and Bernard felt without their kids and grand-kids, in New Zealand now, how much they loved being around us young people, how youth kept them young. In a quiet, intent voice to my right, Alina was telling Fran about her faithless ballet-dancer boyfriend back in Vienna while Alex, on my left, worried about telling his Ghanaian parents that he was gay. ‘They’re liberal,’ he said, ‘but they’re not that liberal.’

  For the most part, I sat and listened, tuning in and out as if sitting in front of a bank of TVs. There was something contagious about all this confiding and I wondered, should I join in, offer something up? That I no longer saw my sister, was drifting away from my best friends? That I hated my mother but wanted her back? That I worried my father was suicidal, that I was a thief of cash and garage glassware, had flunked my exams and lay awake at night, fearful of a future I could not imagine?

  It was too much. There were few parts of my inner life that wouldn’t cause the listener to toy with their beermat, and the only unsullied secret that I felt compelled to share was my great, bursting passion for the girl who sat alongside me now, our hips touching, her bare arm brushing against mine, hand on her cheek – oh, that I were a glove upon that hand and something-something-something – leaning forward, listening to drunk Polly as she held her other hand and told her how beautiful she was as Juliet, how talented. Fran batted the praise away but it was true. By my side was the smartest, brightest, most brilliant girl I’d ever meet, the antidote to all the other shabby dross in my life. I’d never wanted anything more than to be with Fran Fisher, whatever ‘be with’ meant, but which of these people could I tell? Certainly not Fran Fisher.

  Miles returned with a tray of drinks. ‘Chips!’ said Helen. ‘You forgot the chips!’

  ‘And cigarettes!’ shouted Alex.

  ‘No!’ said Ivor. ‘Absolutely no cigarettes!’

  ‘Oh, I would so love a cigarette,’ said Alina.

  ‘Alina, we have a duty of care!’

  ‘A little something to eat might be nice,’ slurred Polly, ‘to soak up some of this white wine. Here, I have the money …’

  ‘No, I’ll go,’ I said, extricating my legs from beneath the picnic table, stumbling and placing my hand on Fran’s shoulder, noting how just for a moment she reached up and held it by the fingertips. My God, I wanted to shout it out!

  And no wonder. As
I walked to the bar, the baked ground was now a swamp beneath my feet. The sodium lights had been turned on and I noted how the moths and midges drifted like burning embers in the warm electric air. That’s how drunk I was – drunk enough to make observations. Inside, the still air smelt of vinegar and hot oil. I ducked under the timber eaves, straightened up and prepared my voice in anticipation of speaking to the landlady. ‘I would like chips, please. Two, no, four, no, six portions. And eight packets of nuts. Four salted, four dry-roasted.’ I sounded like a drunk elocution teacher. ‘And four packets of salt and vinegar crisps.’ It would be expensive, but I had cash and scratch cards in my wallet and the shandy had made me devil-may-care.

  ‘How old are you, sonny?’

  ‘Eighteen?’ Mistake to phrase it as a question. Never mind. Concentrate. I pressed the money into her palm like a bribe. ‘We just want chips!’

  She sighed and handed me a large wooden fish, a number nine painted on its side. ‘Here’s your order number. Listen out, we won’t call it twice.’

  ‘And can the chips be cooked this time? The last lot were raw inside.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, junior,’ she said and waved me away. I scooped up the packets. All these snacks – I’d be greeted like a hero. In the beer garden I saw a family of five on the bench by the door, three girls, two of them identical, laughing at something their dad had said, and even before I’d passed, I knew the third girl would be my sister, out with my mother and her new boyfriend.

  They’d not seen me yet. Jonathan was basking in their laughter and using a half-eaten chip to scoop tartar sauce from his ramekin, and I thought for a moment of ducking back into the pub and skirting the perimeter but—

  ‘Charlie!’ shouted Mum.

  ‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Billie, straightening her face.

  ‘Hello, young man!’ said Jonathan, lean and fit (‘He works out,’ Billie had told me) in his button-down Ted Baker shirt, crop-haired and stubbled like my old Action Man. In our sole encounter at the golf club, he had treated my disdain as if it were a customer complaint and he slipped into this manner now, patient, humble, leaping to his feet and dusting his hands on his khaki cargo pants before offering a handshake. My hands were full and so instead he indicated the girls. ‘Have you met the twins?’

  The twins looked up. In a parallel life, the one where Mum had taken me with her, I’d imagined myself as a sulky but intriguing rebel, a cuckoo in the nest, and I wondered if there might have been a weird, dark tension to it all, forbidden romance in the face of their father’s disapproval. Perhaps that’s why Mum had thought it best to leave me; I was just too dangerous to have in the house. Now that fantasy disintegrated in the face of their scalding indifference. ‘Hiya!’ said one. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ the other; Chatsborne girls, healthy and hearty, as rosy-faced as if they’d just zipped away their rackets. They returned to picking at the side salad.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Mum, bustling things along.

  ‘Just out!’ I said, petulant, embarrassed by my petulance. Billie lowered her eyes and sucked at her straw.

  ‘You work Fridays.’

  ‘Changed my shift.’

  ‘So – who are you with?’

  ‘Just with some mates.’

  ‘The boys? Tell them to come and say hello!’

  I glanced across at the table. Sam and Grace the musicians had arrived, Sam putting his penny whistle to his lips.

  ‘No, some other friends.’

  ‘Do I know them?’

  ‘You don’t have to know everyone I know, do you?’

  ‘No, but I can be curious about them. Can’t I?’

  From the benches, I could hear the wheedling peep of Sam’s whistle, playing a jig. Mum followed my look. ‘Honestly, who brings their recorder to the pub?’

  ‘Dogs won’t like it!’ said Jonathan, and the girls laughed. Honestly, who laughs at their parent’s joke?

  ‘It’s not a recorder,’ I snapped. ‘It’s a penny whistle.’

  ‘I stand corrected!’ said Jonathan, holding up his hands, and I wanted to rip the pockets from his cargo pants. Billie sucked noisily at her straw.

  ‘Billie, love,’ said Mum, ‘I think the glass is empty now.’ At our table, Grace joined Sam on the tambour.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, and rattled the peanuts.

  Mum shook her head sadly. ‘Yes, you go. I’ve really enjoyed our little interaction here.’

  ‘Bye, Billie.’ Billie gave a hostage’s tight smile and I hurried away from Mum’s glare.

  I should never have gone to the bar. I’d lost my place next to Fran – nowhere without me, she’d said – and now she was at the far end of the table with Helen and Alex, distancing themselves from the new great joke, Grace and Sam performing pop hits in the style of mediaeval troubadours, in this case ‘Saturday Night’ by Whigfield. I might have had some tolerance for this kind of Cambridge Footlights larkiness on the lawn of Fawley Manor, but here we were already subject to the kind of looks reserved for new arrivals on B-wing. I reached for my drink, any drink. Along with the peanuts, I’d returned with furious resentment, not just of Mum and her boyfriend but of Billie too, out on a Friday night, laughing away with – was he her stepfather now? Were we in step territory?

  The song had ended. ‘Now do “Stairway to Heaven”!’

  ‘No, “Firestarter”!’

  ‘“When Doves Cry”!’

  ‘Charlie?’ It was Fran, reaching her arm along the length of the table, mouthing the words you okay?

  ‘Charlie?’ said Mum, behind me.

  Everyone stopped speaking and turned to look.

  ‘Hello, everyone, I’m Charlie’s mum!’

  ‘Hello, Charlie’s mum!’ they said. ‘Hello there,’ said Ivor, ‘do you want to join us?’ I looked to Fran, who was smiling, half standing. ‘Yes, come and sit down …’

  ‘No, that’s all right. Just wanted a word. Charlie?’ She was already walking away. I followed her down to the edge of the pond.

  ‘So – how are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Swallows swooped through clouds of midges on the water’s surface.

  ‘Anything going on?’

  ‘Nope. Nothing’s going on.’

  ‘Because I don’t know any of those people.’

  ‘Well, I do!’

  ‘Charlie, you don’t know anyone who plays the penny whistle.’

  I kicked some gravel loose, gathered up some little stones and skimmed one across the pond. ‘I know Lucy Tran, I know Helen Beavis and Colin Smart, they were all at my school.’

  ‘The twins say they know that girl from Chatsborne.’ She was nodding towards Fran.

  ‘We’re not at school any more.’

  ‘But you’ve never mentioned any of them. Charlie. It’s not …’ She put her hand on my arm, and lowered her voice. ‘It’s not a Christian thing, is it?’ I laughed at this and she pinched my arm.

  ‘Ow! What makes you say that?’

  ‘They just have a look to them, all happy-clappy. I don’t mind, it’s your eternal soul, I just want to know!’

  I skimmed another stone. I could have just told her, I suppose. It wouldn’t have been the strangest thing, at sixteen, to be trying something new.

  ‘Or is it a cult? Because I don’t want to have to deprogramme you, Charlie, I’ve got too much on.’

  But I wasn’t ready to confide in Mum again. I still craved the hurt look. ‘It’s not a cult and it’s none of your business!’

  And there it was. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No, not any more.’

  I skimmed another stone. ‘Are you trying to hit those poor birds?’ she said and, when I didn’t answer, sighed. ‘How’s your dad?’

  I skimmed a stone. ‘I’ve not really seen him.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since Monday.’ The next stone pattered far across the water and I glanced at her, for approval I suppose, but she looked anxious and distracted.

&
nbsp; ‘Why not?’ she said, one hand to her forehead. I was, after all, her eyes and ears, there to reassure her.

  ‘I’ve just not been home much, that’s all. He’s fine, we’ve just not spoken.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s asleep when I get back.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘With the cult. It’s quite a time commitment.’

  ‘Charlie, seriously—’

  ‘What with all the rituals and everything—’

  ‘I’m only asking where—’

  ‘And like I said, where I’ve been, it’s none of your busi—’

  ‘Why isn’t it?’ she said, suddenly fierce. ‘What’s your thinking there?’ I went to skim another pebble but she knocked my hand from below, sending them raining onto the water. ‘I am trying with you, Charlie. Please, at least acknowledge that I’m doing my best,’ and she turned, arms folded, head down, and walked back to the pub.

  I remained at the water’s edge, watching the swallows, the thrill of righteousness fading into regret. Up at the table, Full Fathom Five had turned to the English folk repertoire, a lavishly harmonised round of ‘Rose, Rose, Rose Red’ that might never end. I could not go back to that. Even if I somehow retrieved my place next to Fran, I was shaken by my own admission that I’d not seen Dad. He gave no sign of enjoying my company but he didn’t like to be left alone either, and four days must have felt like solitary confinement. I felt the old fears returning. I would leave straight away, get my bike, go home. I heard and felt footsteps behind me, a hand on my back, pushing me towards the water then pulling me back.

  ‘Gotcha!’ It was Alex, with Helen and Fran following behind.

  ‘Look at you, all moody and alone,’ said Helen. ‘What mystery do these dark waters hold?’

  ‘“I’m in mourning for my life!”’ said Fran, whatever that meant.

  ‘Not any more,’ said Alex. ‘He’s coming with us.’

  ‘Alex has a plan,’ said Helen.

  ‘One rule in this life,’ said Alex, ‘when the folk songs start, it’s time to go. Here’s what to do. Charlie, tell everyone you’re going home: “Night everyone, work in the morning”, then go to this address.’ He handed me a scrap of paper, torn from the cover of his script. ‘We’ve got a taxi on its way. Wait for us outside.’