One May Smile
Page 1
ONE MAY SMILE
PENNY FREEDMAN
Copyright © 2013 Penny Freedman
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For my sister, Ros, and my sister-in-law, Naomi – great ambassadors both.
Contents
Cover
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY DRAMATIC SOCIETY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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17
18
19
20
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Penny Freedman studied Classics at Oxford before teaching English in schools and universities. She is also an actress and director. She has a PhD in Shakespeare Studies and lives with her husband in Stratford-upon-Avon. She has two grown-up daughters.
Her previous books featuring Gina Gray and DCI Scott are This is a Dreadful Sentence (2010) and All the Daughters (2012).
FOREWORD
Three years ago I took part in a wonderful British Shakespeare Association conference, held at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore – the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The conference was the brainchild of my niece, Abigail Rokison, and a group of her Cambridge students performed the play, promenade-style, in and around the castle, to great effect. My sister designed and made the costumes. In sending Gina to Elsinore to do costumes for a student production, I have, to some extent, stolen this scenario but Ros’s costumes had far more flair than Gina’s grudging efforts can produce and the Cambridge students were charming, grown-up and quite unlike the neurotic bunch I depict here. And no-one got killed.
Having ventured away from familiar Marlbury, I must thank my Denmark consultant, Katrine Wallis, who read my manuscript with an eagle eye and put me right on all matters Danish. Any remaining errors are all mine.
My tables, meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)
OXFORD UNIVERSITY DRAMATIC SOCIETY
presents
HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK
by
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
14th – 17th July 2011
Kronborg Castle Helsingør
CAST
• James Asquith – Hamlet. Prince of Denmark, son of Old Hamlet
• Jonathan McIntyre – The ghost of Old Hamlet, King of Denmark
– Claudius, brother to Old Hamlet, now King
• Zada Petrosian – Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, now wife to Claudius
• David Underwood – A gravedigger
– Osric, a courtier
– Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain
• Stefan Pienkowsky – Laertes, son of Polonius
– Francisco, a castle guard
• Sophie Forrester – Ophelia, daughter of Polonius
• Tom Yeoman – Horatio, a student, friend to Hamlet
• Conrad Wagner – Rosencrantz, a fellow student of Hamlet
• Marianne Gray – Guildenstern, a fellow student of Hamlet
• Alan Peters – Barnardo, a castle guard
– A travelling actor, playing the king
– Fortinbras, Prince of Norway
• Kelly Mahon – Cornelia, an ambassador
– A travelling actor, playing the queen
• Emma Dalton – A travelling actor
• Clare Dartmouth – A travelling actor
• Adam Barrie – Director
• Marianne Gray – Assistant Director
• Ray Porter – Technical Director
• Tom Yeoman – Music
• Gina Gray – Costumes
• Kelly Mahon – Stage Manager
1
DAY ZERO
A truant disposition, good my lord. 1.2
Aestivation biologists call it – a sort of summer hibernation. Reptiles and amphibians do it a lot, apparently, and I’m heading there myself in my unlit lair, hardly in touch with the outer world on this slumberous July afternoon. I am already in vacation mode, slow-moving, vacant-minded and humming gently and untunefully to myself as I contemplate my time off for good behaviour. Three weeks! I have never taken three weeks’ holiday all in one go before, and the urge to compensate for this indulgence is probably the reason why I am, at present, kneeling on the floor in my windowless inner office (in truth hardly more than a large cupboard) surrounded by heaps of files, newly organised and labelled, the outcome of a year’s work in the English Language Unit of Marlbury University College, the evidence that proves I deserve a holiday.
I feel smug down here on the floor as I contemplate my shiny files, and disinclined to move on to the next stage of what will, in truth, be a busy and fractious day, the last before going away; a day of lists and last-minute phone calls, hasty emails and unwise last-minute purchases. I sit leaning against a filing cabinet and close my eyes. Five minutes, I think. Five minutes of doing nothing. And suddenly I am under attack. A thunderous knocking at the door of my outer office penetrates my shell of quiet. It is followed by the rapid tramping of male feet, and suddenly the air around me darkens and I look up, bewildered to find that I am sharing my cupboard with enough Greeks to block the pass at Thermopylae. My dormant brain tells me that they are very cross about something but as they are all talking at once I have no idea what it is. My Greek students tend to go for high-volume, uninflected streams of words that the English brain finds hard to disentangle at the best of times – which this isn’t. I look round them for enlightenment and spot among my surprise guests a face I recognise. Then I understand, with a nasty plunge of the stomach, what – or rather, who – this is about.
You will appreciate that I’m not in a strong position for conflict resolution, crouched here on my knees. I have been down here for so long that at least one of my legs has gone to sleep so there is no chance of my leaping lithely to my feet and establishing my authority. And, frankly, even if that were possible, I would hardly impress in my washed-out T-shirt, old jeans and bare feet. Well, I wasn’t expecting students to call, was I? It’s vacation, isn’t it? I’m aestivating. Still, I can’t just go on sitting here while they all talk over my head as though I were a toddler.
‘Costas,’ I call through the din to the hirsute young man I remember as a cherubic lad in my foundation year class a couple
of years ago, ‘play the gentleman and help me up. Then we’ll go through to where there is light and air and you can tell me – quietly – what the problem is.’
As a young teacher I was advised to deal with aggression by speaking quietly and slowly, leeching the heat out of the situation, and this does generally work. Not this afternoon, however. Costas does reach out a sheepish arm to help me up, but once I’m on my feet his companions don’t retreat. I know southern cultures expect less personal space than northern ones so it is possible that my Greek visitors don’t think that they’re invading mine. I certainly feel invaded, however, and there’s an overpowering smell of angry male sweat that makes me feel that an open window is desirable. What’s more, they are still all talking at once and I still can’t understand what they’re saying. Since the low and slow approach doesn’t seem to be working, I ditch it and take a deep breath. ‘SHUT UP!’ I yell, and in the brief moment of surprise I elbow my way from among them and make it out of the cupboard to stand by the open door of my office, take in a few breaths of air and to ask, as they stream out after me, ‘Now, what’s the matter?’ As they all take breath to answer, I command, in my best schoolteacher voice, ‘I want Costas to answer. I want to hear just from him. The rest of you can be quiet.’
There is a mutinous mutter – it really doesn’t do to speak like this to Greek men – but Costas is given the floor. ‘You have a student, Anastasia Christodoulou,’ he declares, as though defying me to deny it.
‘I do,’ I agree, and then correct myself. ‘I did.’
‘I am the cousin of Anastasia.’
‘I know you are.’ I look round. ‘And are you all the cousins of Anastasia too?’
‘Friends!’ they cry.
‘Friends of Anastasia or of Costas?’
They are friends of both, it seems, as they fill my office with expansive gestures to demonstrate the extent of their friendships, the warmth of their hearts. They are all – all – friends and they must all speak to me. But I’m having none of it.
‘Do you know the expression mob-handed?’ I ask. ‘No? Going mob-handed means going around in a large group threatening people, and that’s what you’re doing and I don’t like it. I’ll talk to Costas, as he’s Anastasia’s cousin, but I’d like the rest of you to leave. You can wait outside if you like, and if there’s anything more to be said after Costas has had his say, you can say it then.’
There follows a rapid, angry discussion in Greek and I remain at my post by the door. I’m not sure how this will turn out but if they won’t leave, then I shall have to. I’m not staying here to be bullied; I shall simply make a dignified exit. Except that my shoes are lying in the other room, where I kicked them off, and there is a phalanx of Greeks positioned between me and them. The teacher in me registers an excellent example of zeugma here, to be stored up for classroom use: she departed with dignity but without her shoes. I’m not sure I can carry that off.
As it turns out, I don’t have to. The swirling vigour of their discussion finally quietens; they turn to Costas to issue battle orders; they march out, scowling. I close the door and seat myself behind my desk in the feeble hope that Costas will forget about my jeans and my bare feet. I offer him a chair but he prefers to pace about, stoking his outrage. He is a nice lad really and I haven’t been kind in picking him out from the troops for single combat, but that’s too bad.
‘Your decision about Anastasia,’ he says, ‘is unacceptable, completely unacceptable, and it must be reversed.’ He emphasises his last words by driving a fist into the palm of his other hand. I suspect that he has seen his father do that. ‘You are the chief examiner. You can do this.’
I lean back in my chair. ‘Wrong on all counts, I’m afraid, Costas,’ I say. ‘The decision to disqualify Anastasia’s literature paper was the only acceptable decision in the circumstances, it certainly shouldn’t be reversed and I absolutely don’t have the power to do it anyway. Even the Vice-Chancellor can’t do that. We have to abide by the regulations.’
His sneer tells me what he thinks of the regulations but I’m not prepared to have them shrugged off as bureaucratic flim-flam. I take a breath and I cut to the chase.
‘Anastasia cheated,’ I say, and as he starts to protest I ride over him. ‘She went into her English Literature exam wearing a baseball cap full of post-it notes with quotations on them. There is no ambiguity about this. It was cheating at its most blatant.’
‘It was a misunderstanding.’
‘A misunderstanding?’ I can hear my voice starting to get screechy.
‘She had them for revision before the examination. It was just a mistake.’
‘Oh come on. The invigilator saw her. She took the cap off and looked at the notes three or four times before he approached her. There was no misunderstanding. She was simply cheating and the rules are clear: anyone caught cheating is disqualified, and that’s that.’
‘You don’t understand. It has been hard for Anastasia.’
I don’t understand? What I understand and would like him to understand, but can’t say, because it would be unprofessional, is filling my head to exploding point. I would like Costas to understand that ever since Anastasia Christodoulou arrived to take the foundation course for overseas students at Marlbury University College, in order to qualify for a degree course in Law, she has been the bane, not of my life, because that has several other banes in it, but certainly of my work life. In her single person she succeeded in doubling my workload as director of the English Language Unit; I have a substantial box file packed solid with paperwork to prove it. Delve into it and you will find that she managed to piss off more or less everyone on the campus, from the Professor of Jurisprudence to Nigel in the Accommodation Office (to whom she offered a brown envelope full of cash if he would turn another student out of a room which she preferred to her own). You will find endless memos from academic staff about seminars unattended and coursework undone; three separate paper trails necessitated by suspicions about plagiarised essays; print-offs of e-mail correspondence with the warden of her hall of residence over smoking in a non-smoking room and repeated complaints from her neighbours about noise, and a copy of an official police caution issued following abusive behaviour to a traffic warden. You will also find several medical certificates, almost certainly forged, and a snappy note from the Student Counselling Service asking me to make it clear to Miss Christodoulou that there is heavy demand for counselling and that sessions cannot be fitted in around her social life. ‘Would you say,’ I ask mildly, ‘that Anastasia had been happy here this year?’
‘No!’ He is outraged at the suggestion. ‘It has been a terrible time for her.’
‘Exactly. So isn’t it best all round that she won’t be coming back for another three years of misery?’
‘But my uncle,’ Costas protests, as though it is only my amazing stupidity that has stopped me from thinking of this. ‘My uncle will arrive here tomorrow. She cannot tell him. It is impossible. She would rather die.’
‘You mean he doesn’t know she failed?’ Costas says nothing. ‘So why is he coming here tomorrow?’
He gazes at me miserably then flops into the chair he rejected earlier. ‘Anastasia could not tell her parents that she failed so she told them she doesn’t want to carry on – she wants to take another course somewhere else.’
‘And her father’s visit?’ I ask. ‘My uncle’s mind is not easy to change. He has come to make sure that Anastasia is enrolled for her Law degree. And so, of course, he will learn the truth.’
‘And you thought that between now and tomorrow morning I could snap my fingers and make the cheating – not to mention the fails in her other papers – disappear?’
For the first time he actually looks embarrassed. ‘No. I don’t think so, but you can speak to him – persuade him that it would be better for Anastasia to take a different course.’
‘And I wouldn’t mention the fact that Anastasia can’t actually take a course here?’
; ‘No.’
‘And what sort of course would Anastasia like to take, may I ask?’
‘She would like to work in a kindergarten.’
A kindergarten? I try to picture it and it’s like Cruella De Vil working as a veterinary nurse. I conjure up the milky, sticky, poster paint world of my granddaughter Freda’s nursery as it was when I dropped her off there this morning, and into it I transplant the Junoesque form of Anastasia, stomping in her killer heels among the floor-based toddlers, sending them scuttling for cover, or scowling and pouting her way through a reading of Mr Gumpy’s Outing in her sullen monotone, or leaning over to supervise pasta-shape-picture production and mesmerising her little charges with a view of the flower tattoo low on her left breast.
‘Does Anastasia actually like children?’ I ask, dazed.
‘Of course.’ Costas sounds shocked that I should doubt it, but I suspect that he is young enough to believe that liking children goes automatically with the XX-chromosome pair.
‘Well she doesn’t seem to like anyone else,’ I say.
He looks reproachful. ‘Anastasia is a quite normal girl. She has had troubles here.’
I don’t say And she’s certainly spread them around. Instead, I allow a beat and then I get to my feet. ‘Well, Costas.’ I say, ‘I’m sure I’d enjoy the challenge of telling Mr Christodoulou that his daughter should give up the prospect of life as a high-flying lawyer for a career in potty-training, but unfortunately I can’t do it – literally can’t do it. I go on holiday tomorrow morning. I shall be out of the country when he arrives.’