Sweet Sorrow

by David Nicholls

  For what might have been an hour or perhaps ten minutes, we lay with our eyes closed, listening to the music, tuning in and out of conversations. The party was entering its final stage and, hoping to find some life, Fran and I went back outside. The famous pines were silhouetted against the brightening sky now. On the abandoned dance floor, she slipped her hand onto my back; I held her hip, her shoulder blade, but the music was now too quiet to drown out the sound of the blackbirds, the best and worst of sounds, and so we just clung to each other.

  ‘Today is tomorrow,’ said Fran, and I remembered a scene from the play, the lovers complaining about the break of day, making excuses – the lark is just a nightingale, the dawn light a meteor – and I thought it might be clever to slip into that dialogue. But my brain was too fuzzy to recall a single line with any accuracy and paraphrasing something about larks and comets might make me sound mad.

  Besides, a thought that I’d been suppressing all night had finally gate-crashed its way in and, close behind, another, darker thought and I suddenly felt as sober as I’d ever been. The anxiety was physical, as if realising that I’d left a bath running for the whole week, and Fran felt the snap of tension.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve not seen my dad for five days now.’

  ‘Where’s he been?’

  ‘Nowhere. That’s the point.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have made you come.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Of course I was going to come.’

  ‘But, go now! I have to get home anyway, before they wake up.’

  ‘Should we say goodbye to the others?’

  She kissed me. ‘No, let’s just leave. They’ll know.’

  Shoes in hand, we crossed the cool, damp lawn, scattered with cocktail glasses, champagne flutes and empty bottles. Outside, I unlocked my bike. The village where Fran lived was four miles from here and I had an idea that she might sit on the saddle while I pedalled but, like the underwater kiss, this is one of those things that works better on screen than in real life. Besides, the tyres were soft and our combined weight made the wheel rims grind into the tarmac and so we walked and every now and then Fran would climb on the bike and sit there, queenly, while I pushed.

  We crossed the motorway, silent for the first time, as if we were the only people left on earth, and as the streets gave way to countryside, we would break off at intervals to fall upon each other, in fields and verges, prickly and dew-damp, the bicycle wheel spinning as if we’d been thrown into the cow parsley in some terrible accident. At one point we both urgently needed to pee, Fran squatting blithely across an irrigation ditch, me standing just a short way off, the process taking longer than seemed possible. ‘Christ, I’m like a horse,’ said Fran and I laughed and thought, wow, look at us, weeing next to each other, filthy and sophisticated. Certainly Alex’s exquisite shirt was now a rag, grass-stained and rank, and later, when I smuggled it into our machine for a hot wash, I discovered that one rare and pearly button was missing, lost to the verge of a B-road, wrenched off while making love.

  ‘Making love’ is silly. The most precise term that I can come up with for what we did is dry-humping, which goes some way to illustrating the gulf between language and experience. Groping is gross, fooling around makes it sound frivolous, but whatever it was called, it meant that a journey of an hour or so took nearly three, and the village was stirring and stretching as we approached, stockbrokers walking the dog to fetch the weekend Telegraph. Here was Fran’s house, detached, white-painted, sash-windowed with roses in the garden.

  ‘So. D’you want to come in, meet Graham and Claire?’

  ‘Oh. It’s half seven …’

  ‘Come on, we’ll wake them up, tell them the news!’

  ‘Oh. Okay, so if you think it’s—’

  ‘I’m kidding, Charlie.’

  ‘Okay. That’s really funny.’

  ‘I mean you’ll meet them one day, but …’

  ‘What will you tell them now?’

  ‘I’ll say I’ve been at Sarah’s. They half know it’s not true, but they’re cool about it. Or they pretend to be. “Been at Sarah’s” is a kind of code for “I’m sorry but don’t worry”.’ She took my hand and, between kisses, ‘Wish I could take you up to my room. Smuggle you in, keep you there.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘We could wait ’til they were out, then I’d fall on you – we could stay in bed all day, listen for the car and then I’d put you back in the wardrobe.’

  ‘What would I eat?’

  ‘I’d sneak food off my plate like in a novel, slide it under the door.’ We elaborated on the plan and kissed, but my jaw was aching now and Fran had the beginnings of a scoured rash around her mouth, a red ring like a clown’s make-up. ‘You should go,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she said, then, more earnestly, ‘but let’s be clever about this.’

  ‘So – you want to keep it secret?’ I’d expected this – most of the kisses I’d shared had come with stern vows of non-disclosure – but Fran just laughed.

  ‘No! Bollocks to that. No, I want to tell everyone! I mean we’re not going to put an advert in the Advertiser, but we’re not going to hide it. We’re going to be … cool about it.’ She kissed me. ‘We’ll be cool with everyone except each other.’

  ‘So – what will you tell people?’

  ‘I met this boy. I like him, I really do, and … we’re going to see what happens. Does that sound about right?’

  ‘Okay. I’ve got to work until nine tonight, but … could I see you after?’ It was a joke, but not entirely a joke.

  She laughed. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Tomorrow then.’

  ‘No! Monday, after rehearsals.’

  It was essential, I knew, to betray no disappointment at this, but something must have passed across my face, because she held on to both my shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. We will find a way.’ We kissed and stood holding each other as if I’d been banished to Mantua, and I thought that I might risk something.

  ‘Sweet sorrow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sweet sorrow?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You know. Parting is such—’

  ‘Yes, I got the reference, it’s my line. I just didn’t hear you.’ She mumbled something.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, “It’s important to enunciate”.’

  ‘It is important.’

  ‘It is.’ We kissed again. ‘Okay, that’s enough. Monday.’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Goodbye. Bye.’

  By now the tyres on my bicycle were too flat to ride it home and so I walked through the summer morning with a new conviction, one that didn’t come from an entirely rational mind, and it was this:

  That if I could be with Fran Fisher, if she could somehow accept me and all my past faults, all the squalor and weirdness and worry, then in turn I would become a better version of myself, a version so excellent and exemplary that it was practically new. I had not been the person I wanted to be, but there was no reason why this couldn’t change. A new phase of life had begun, as precisely as if at the click of a stopwatch, and from now on I would no longer be defined by absences, the things that I was not. In the play, the Nurse lists Romeo’s qualities: honest and courteous, handsome, kind and virtuous, and while ‘handsome’ was not for me to say, there was no reason not to take the others on and to supplement them. I would be wise too, brave and loyal, a champion against injustice. I would be funny – was this something you could decide to be? – but not foolish, not a clown. I’d be reckless but not irresponsible, popular but not ingratiating. I’d read more and better books, wash more thoroughly, I’d brush my teeth with flair and zeal, devise a daily fitness regime and stick to it, carry myself differently, confident and straight, and get up earlier so that the days were as full as they could possibly be. I’d buy new clothes, get a smarter look, cut my hair, stop stealing, be more tolerant of Dad, more forgi
ving of Mum, a better older brother to Billie. I’d eat salad. Fish. Water – I’d drink a lot more water, two litres a day; no one, not even Miles, would drink more water than me.

  On this warm, bright summer’s morning a lifetime’s worth of New Year’s resolutions were being made at once. An entirely new way of being – it was not something to take on lightly, an overwhelming project really but one I couldn’t wait to start, and I began to wish I had my headphones in my pocket and my portable CD player so I could give this all a soundtrack, an anthem of self-improvement. I’d write the resolutions down if necessary, pin them to the wall like a proclamation and stick to them, because being in love – no other word – was like being pushed out into a spotlight on a stage and under that kind of scrutiny it was important that I get everything absolutely right. From now on I would live beyond reproach and I would move differently through this world. ‘A Good Town’ said the road sign, Bonum Oppidum, and I thought, yes, perhaps it is, perhaps it can be.

  At home, Dad was sleeping on the sofa, curtains drawn, a small flotilla of mugs and plates surrounding him, the TV playing Saturday-morning pop videos. I tugged the curtain to one side until the sunlight met his eyes, and he blinked and raised his hand, mouth opening with a sticky pop.

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘Sleeping beauty.’ I began opening windows.

  ‘There you are! I waited up for you.’

  ‘I’ve just got in. I went to a party. Sorry, I should have let you know.’ I would be more considerate from now on. This man had quite enough to worry about.

  ‘Who with? Your mates?’

  ‘Some other friends. I had to walk them home. I’ll tell you later.’ Why ‘them’, not ‘her’? I would be more honest and open, and I would change my voice and talk to my father like a friend. ‘I stopped and got us some bread and eggs.’ Brown bread, brown eggs, free-range. ‘I’ll make you breakfast. I got these too.’ A plastic bag of exquisite oranges, warm and scented, six little suns that I’d got from the Spar. I’d get the sticky juicer out from the back of the cupboard. From now on we’d have oranges every weekend, like they do in the Mediterranean …

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Dad.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you still drunk?’

  ‘Nope. Just … happy. That’s allowed, isn’t it?’ And I wondered, and hoped, that if misery could be contagious, perhaps happiness could be too.

  My father hauled himself upright and dragged his hands down his face. ‘It’s unusual.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Not sure if I like it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It won’t last.’

  Part Three

  AUGUST

  –

  What did he when thou saw’st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.

  William Shakespeare, As You Like It

  Love

  But love is boring. Love is familiar and commonplace for anyone not taking part, and first love is just a gangling, glandular incarnation of the same. Shakespeare must have known this; take a copy of the world’s most famous love story and pinch between finger and thumb the pages where the lovers are truly happy; not the build-up that precedes it, not the strife that follows, but the time when love is mutual and untroubled. It’s a few pages, a pamphlet almost, the brief interlude between anticipation and despair. The confidences and intimacies of new lovers, the formation of private jokes, the confessions of doubt and insecurity, the reassurances and vows; there’s only so much of that stuff that anyone can bear and if Shakespeare ever did write the scenes where the lovers talk about their favourite food, or pick the fluff from their belly buttons, or earnestly explain the lyrics of their favourite songs, then he was right to exclude them from the second draft.

  The beginning and the end, the anticipation and despair, that’s where the story lies, but the state of being in love, and in particular of being young and in love, is like listening to someone describe their parachute jump or their bizarre dream, the blurred photograph of a life-changing performance, taken from too far away. The more intense the experience, the less inclined we are to hear about it, and while we’re happy that their life was changed and it must have been thrilling – can we move on?

  So best to assume that when we were alone and we weren’t talking, then we were kissing or fooling around, and that this was all amazing, so much so that I couldn’t comprehend why grown-ups weren’t doing it all the time, something, I suppose, that we all spend the rest of our lives discovering. Assume, too, that when we stopped long enough to talk, these conversations were all more open and insightful, free-flowing and intense, funny and serious and profound than any other conversation that has ever taken place; not just talking, but really talking. Assume that we were funnier than anyone we’d ever met and that the time when I made Fran laugh so hard that she wet herself, actually wet herself through jeans, was one of the proudest moments of my life. Assume that nothing was felt in a half-hearted way, whether passion or anxiety, desire or fear. Assume that we made compilations and liked each other’s music fiercely and, if not, pretended to, that we listened solemnly and silently to Nick Cave and Scott Walker singing about us, Nico and Nina Simone auditioning for the song that would be our song, the song that made us cry, and that other behaviour previously thought to be silly or repulsive – holding hands, aggressive public kissing, the passing of chewing gum from mouth to mouth – lost its queasiness. Assume that we never wanted to be anywhere else, or with anyone else, that time apart was time wasted and that it was impossible to imagine the circumstances when we might not feel this way. There’s some of this to come, not much more than a pamphlet, and it can’t be helped. The greater part of it will go unmentioned but also unforgotten.

  First I would need to see her again, and in the forty-eight hours until our next meeting, I rediscovered that science-fictional awareness of time. The weekend crawled as if taking place on a distant planet. ‘For in a minute there are many days,’ says Juliet, who, I’d come to realise, had all the best and truest lines. It was one of those moments in the play where I’d think how does Shakespeare know?

  Forty-eight hours, forty-six, forty-four. My God, imagine if I’d been banished to Mantua. How would I fill all this slow motion? I knew that this was in part a test, and I retained enough self-control to stay away from the phone or just-passing trips to her village. Instead, I succumbed to a bone-deep tiredness and an ache in my jaw and an itchy, fidgety restlessness through the long, humid nights in the bottom bunk, in part a spiritual yearning, in part a sweaty, un-poetic horniness of the kind found in army barracks. ‘Agony’: the word seemed to be thrown around a great deal in descriptions of parted lovers but it certainly applied to the hours spent staring at the petrol station forecourt through the Saturday-night shift, my lover’s paranoia relieved only by lurid and explicit memories of the things we’d done in the bus shelters and hedgerows on the way home. Forty-two hours, thirty-six, twenty-four; I might not have come up with the words, but I couldn’t help thinking Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds …

  On Sunday, in a regrettable fit of soulfulness, I thought that I might draw her from memory. Until now, most of the eyes I’d drawn had dangled from the sockets of skulls, and my attempts at her face, though not a bad likeness, had a generalised, conventional glamour that I knew Fran would have rejected, the eyes too large and wet, the lips too full. Be true, I told myself, but my attempts at sensuality resulted in the kind of home-made erotica that prison inmates pay for with cigarettes. The best attempt was a version of how she had looked somersaulting underwater, her toes pointed, the oily black nightdress floating up around her hips and clinging to her breasts. I could really go to town with the black in this one, was particularly proud of the rendition of her hardened nipple, viewed in profile, a single black mark with my Rotring 0.4mm.

  Four hours, three, two, one
and there she was at nine on Monday, pushing her bicycle for the first time. Some transformation seemed to have taken place, because she seemed even lovelier than I’d remembered – did a girl’s face change once you’d kissed her? – and I was very taken with the way she let her bike, a beautiful old thin-framed racer, fall on top of mine in a way that I found fantastically provocative.

  ‘Hey there,’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, and smiled.

  We’d agreed to be cool with each other, but somehow word had spread, even before we could begin rehearsals.

  ‘Nice weekend, you two?’ said Lucy.

  ‘Hello, lovebirds,’ said Keith.

  ‘Well, Benvolio, you’re a dark horse,’ said Miles, pinching the flesh above my collar-bone as we made our way to the orangery.

  ‘Well, I think it’s lovely, two young people getting together,’ said Polly. ‘There’s one every season.’

  Even Ivor and Alina seemed to know. ‘I think we should probably keep you two apart!’ said Ivor with a bumptious wink, as we were divided into pairs for the Capulet ball, the first scene to involve the entire company.

  Alina’s concept was to begin with a traditional courtly dance, hands on hips and white handkerchiefs held aloft, then become increasingly crazed and wild and modern as the scene went on before the whole company froze, holding their pose at the point where Romeo and Juliet finally see each other. Apart from the Macarena and the hokey-cokey, I’d never followed choreography and now the concept of left and right, forward and back seemed far harder as I wondered, did ‘hello’ mean ‘it’s over’? Might ‘Let’s talk later’ mean ‘let’s never talk again’? At one point in the formal dance, I had to take her hand for a moment and I wondered, what should I read into the interlaced fingers, the circular motion of her thumb in the palm of my hand? I found her palm with my own thumb and rubbed back frantically in a way that I hoped was erotic. ‘Wait for me later,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Yes?’