All She Wants

by Jonathan Harvey

  ‘Thanks.’

  His accent wasn’t London. I couldn’t place it, but he wasn’t a cockney.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  He shrugged, like it was nothing.

  ‘It’s been lying in our flat for ages. I thought my flatmate had dropped it round. She said she was going to. I just found it and . . . are you gutted?’

  He re-read it, then looked at me. Now I could see a flash of pain in his eyes, though possibly this was the pain of embarrassment and thinking I was a nosey parker. God his eyes were piercing. Part Pierce Brosnan, part psychotic serial killer.

  ‘S’her loss,’ he grunted.

  I nodded eagerly. And his hair. Cropped Action Man short, drawing attention to his cobalt blue eyes.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ I agreed. ‘She’s a bitch. Fancy dumping someone on a postcard. And that Ricky sounds like a complete knob.’

  He laughed. He actually laughed. He didn’t throw his head back or anything, but it was definitely a faint chuckle. His eyes narrowed as he did it and his Adam’s apple wobbled. OK, if I’m honest it might just have been a giggle.

  ‘Thanks, anyway.’

  ‘I know how it feels.’

  He nodded again, looking slightly alarmed as he noticed I was wearing my slippers in broad daylight. He took hold of the front door as if to close it.

  ‘Like I said . . .’

  He was about to say ‘thanks’ when I heard myself blurting out, ‘I found my brother sucking off my husband on our wedding day!’

  I blurted it really loudly. In fact, it was more like, I FOUND­MY­BROTHER­SUCKING­MY­HUSBAND­OFF­ON­OUR­WEDDING­DAY!

  A passing businessman did a double take and I’m sure I saw a net curtain twitch to my right. My subtext was, I’m not mad, I’m your friend. But maybe my acting wasn’t up to much because he swallowed warily and said, ‘See you,’ before shutting the door. My subtext had obviously come across as, I am a complete nutter. We are both single. Marry me?

  As the door shut in my face I was crestfallen. I knew full well I’d made a holy show of myself.

  Still, I thought, London’s a big place. OK, so he lives a few doors down from me, but what are the chances of bumping into him again? Moth was always moaning on about how she’d seen some majorly cute guy on the Tube or in the corner shop, and how she hoped in vain to see him again and it never ever happened. Apart from the pervy guy who always seemed to rub up against her on the night bus (though Amanda claimed she made this up to appear sexy and appealing). So I was never going to see Stuart Moses again. Ever. So that was OK. Phew. And relax!

  I bumped into him that very same night.

  Karaoke night at our local pub, the Lost Camel, was a very competitive affair. The participants took it surprisingly seriously, arriving immaculately groomed and with their mates videoing their efforts, so they could watch them back later and discuss in impromptu focus groups dotted around the bar. A gang of us from college went every Tuesday night, if we weren’t rehearsing our latest show, and joined in the festivities. I was always a bit embarrassed about getting up and exposing my singing voice, so I’d usually plump for a comedy classic. Well, I say classic, it was often something like ‘The Birdie Song’ or ‘Goldfinger’, which I would do in a pseudo Shirley Bassey grouch. On this particular night I leafed through the laminated book of song choices while Amanda was emoting on the mic to ‘Love On The Rocks’ and found my perfect – and I thought hilarious – choice.

  Halfway through murdering ‘Psycho Killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est?)’, with my fellow students doing some comedy head banging around their table, I caught a startled gaze in the corner of the room. Stuart Moses was supping a pint with a couple of other fellas and his eyes locked on me. He was wearing some kind of denim jacket and had sunglasses perched on his head, but the eyes were unmistakable. Before I finished I saw him mouth something to his mates, knock back his pint, then get up and leave. As he snaked his way through the pub I called out, ‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!’ And he was gone. He had had it confirmed that not only was his slightly stalkerish neighbour a nosey private postcard reader, she was also a pscyho killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est?).

  Still. I’d probably never see him again, eh?

  I saw him three weeks later.

  Mum and Dad came to stay for a long weekend. It was so lovely to see them, and they even brought the dog. What was extra nice was that Rupert had gone away to Brighton to be presented with an honorary doctorate for his work in theatre and he offered me his house to look after for the weekend, which meant Mum and Dad could have their own room and the dog had the garden to play in. My only responsibility was to feed and water Rupert’s pet rabbits, who lived in a pen in said garden. There were loads of them, so many I lost count.

  So far so good.

  Until the dog came running into the house with a soily dead rabbit in his gob. He dropped it on the kitchen floor, wagging his tail, as if to say, ‘Look what I did! Aren’t I clever? I killed one of Rupert’s rabbits! Do I get a gold star?’

  Convinced I was going to be kicked out of drama school for having my parents’ dog murder one of Rupert’s prize pets, Mum decided the best plan of action was to replace the rabbit with a lookalike from the local pet shop.

  Amazingly, they had one reasonably similar. A snip at fifty pounds – don’t worry, Dad paid. I was just joking to the assistant that I was replacing one I’d killed – ‘I am indeed a bunny boiler’ – when I caught someone staring at me from the other side of a rack of dog leads. Those eyes again. Stuart Moses hurried out.

  About a month later Moth and I were window shopping in Covent Garden when we came across a string quartet busking in the piazza. Moth asked me if I had ever learned any instruments. I told her I’d had a few lessons on the violin at school before deciding it wasn’t for me, and she nodded, not really listening. Spotting an opportunity for a gag I added loudly, just as the quartet finished their last note, so the whole piazza heard, ‘I guess you could say I was a kiddy fiddler.’

  A thousand faces turned and looked at me. Jeez, the mortification. And then I saw The Eyes. Followed by Stuart Moses scurrying away again. Moth giggled nervously and the quartet started to scratch out a Brandenburg Concerto.

  Brilliant. So not only did my neighbour think I was a psycho killer and a bunny boiler, he now also thought I was a paedophile to boot. Not exactly what you’d call a catch.

  I toyed with popping a note through his door explaining my actions, but like Moth said, What did it matter? So what if he thought I was loop the loop? I didn’t want a man in my life. I was training seriously for a career. I was focusing on me, not men.

  There was a postscript to the Rupert rabbit story. When he returned, newly mortar-boarded from Brighton, he went out into the garden to say hi to the rabbits while I made a fresh pot of coffee to welcome him home. He returned moments later looking confused.

  ‘Everything OK, Rupert?’ I asked.

  ‘The rabbits,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I know. Aren’t they great?’

  ‘They’re too much.’

  ‘Oh, I know. They’re hilarious. God I’ve spent . . . so many hours . . . just . . . you know. Watching them . . . being all . . . rabbity.’

  ‘No I mean . . . there are too many of them.’

  ‘Sorry, Rupert?’

  ‘I only had five. Now I have six.’

  ‘Gosh. Erm . . .’

  Now I was the one looking confused. What had I done?

  ‘I used to have six, but one died. I buried him in the garden, but he appears to have disappeared. And an extra live one has appeared in the hutch.’

  Oh bollocks!

  FOURTEEN

  2008

  To celebrate Moth’s birthday, a gang of us had piled down to a boat on the Thames that was a popular drinking hole for fully fledged ‘proper’ actors. There’d been a flurry of excitement in our party when we got there because someone from EastEnders was pissed at the bar and one of her tit
s kept popping out of her wrap-around cardi. The clocks were going forward that night and there was anticipation in the air that summer was on its way and the days were going to get longer. We were now in our final year of college and it felt like the future was full of possibilities, a journey into an exciting unknown that could only bring us good fortune.

  As we sat in the starboard corner knocking back warm bottled lager, I looked around the boat and considered the other revellers. Because of the reputation of the place I guessed they were all proper actors, and yet I recognized none of them apart from the drunk one at the bar, who was now leaning on the plump black woman next to her and laughing her head off. Were they all out of work? Was I training to be part of a profession where, for eleven months of the year, I was going to be signing on and then, for the remaining month, feeling grateful to be in an unpaid play in a room above a pub? I tried to shake off the feeling of insecurity with a few glugs of lager and joined in with the laughter round our table. Moth was doing an impersonation of Rupert, which was pretty much spot on, and we howled with laughter, not just because it was particularly hilarious, but because it was her birthday and there was a general feeling of excitement in the air.

  When ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ came on the jukebox, Moth jumped up and started dancing in the style of Rupert and we all got up and joined in. ‘Rupert Dancing’ is a bit like something I often used to do at parties, which I called ‘Dad Dancing’. This mostly involves moving off the beat from side to side while making ‘come hither’ movements with my hands, as if beckoning others to join in the gleeless jig. Moth’s twist on this, to make it more like the daddy of them all, Rupert, was to chuck in a few clog dance moves. Our movement teacher would have been proud.

  After a few Cossack jump downs and some inappropriate sand dancing I decided it was time for another drink, so shimmied my way towards the bar. The actress from EastEnders saw my movement and shimmied in her seat, laughing her head off, which caused her to suddenly slip from her barstool and land in a heap on the floor. She grabbed hold of her neighbour as she plummeted, pulling at the woman’s blouse. The woman slapped the actress and screeched, ‘Oi, watch me fucking blouse, wanker!’ I liked her instantly.

  She had a really big arse and, unlike most of the women I knew, she made no attempt to hide it. In fact, she positively celebrated it, wearing leggings and a bolero jacket, both of which were a deep crimson. I had an irresistible desire to slap her on her backside and say, ‘Go Sister!’ but I held back, fearful of getting a reciprocal punch in the teeth.

  I helped her lift the actress back onto her stool and she flashed me a grimace that said she wasn’t impressed with her levels of drunkenness, then said, ‘Please don’t do any more dodgy dance moves. She’ll just wanna imitate you. She’s at that stage where it’s all gestures and incoherence.’

  ‘You’re all right,’ I said, desperate to impress this fabulous, fierce creature. ‘All my other moves are boss.’

  ‘You a Scouser? Oh my God!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ I conceded, and she laughed.

  ‘That’s what they all say!’ And then her face turned serious. ‘You an actress?’

  I shrugged nonchalantly and said, ‘Yes.’ Then I stepped nearer the bar to grab the attention of the barman, who was currently pulling fluff out of his bellybutton. The fabulous creature leaned in and growled, ‘I’ll get this. What you having?’

  ‘Er, a bottle of Becks, please.’

  I was going to get several others, but I couldn’t be that much of a cheapskate to get my new best friend (OK, slight exaggeration there) to fork out for my friends’ drinks, too.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I added, and she nodded, like it was a stupid question. Then she snapped her fingers in the direction of the barman and growled.

  ‘Oi! Tonto! If you could, like, pull down your T-shirt for two seconds and serve me?’

  The barman waddled over and soon I had my beer.

  ‘So,’ she’d turned her back on EastEnders lady and gave me her undivided attention, ‘who’s your agent?’

  Oh God. Now she was going to know I was lying. Now I’d have to come clean and say I wasn’t really an actress, I was only training. My cover was blown, so I just shrugged and said, ‘Haven’t got one.’

  She didn’t seem to be listening, instead she was looking me up and down, sizing me up. She didn’t go so far as to lick her teeth and say, ‘Tasty,’ but I felt like a prize heifer on slaughter day and she was the farmer about to name her price – that is, if farmers are Afro-Caribbean, fierce and dripping in chunky gold jewellery, and with nails so big that if she picked her nose she’d give herself a brain haemorrhage.

  ‘Wanna come to a casting on Monday?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m looking for Scousers.’

  ‘Oh, are you a director?’

  ‘Casting.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘New advert. Can I take your number?’

  So I found myself giving it to her while she punched it into her Palm Pilot.

  ‘Who was that coloured lady you were talking to all night?’ Moth asked on the night bus later.

  ‘Her name was Laveenia and she’s not coloured, she’s black.’

  Moth tutted. ‘What’s the difference?’

  I couldn’t be bothered to get into a semi-drunken discussion about the politics of racism – possibly because I didn’t understand it – so I decided to show off instead.

  ‘She’s a casting director.’

  Moth looked up. Until then she’d been slobbering a bit and leaning her head against the window.

  ‘Really?’

  There was a tangible hint of jealousy in her voice. As potential actors, casting directors were people to keep in with. They were part of the great food chain that got you work. I nodded.

  ‘She wants me to go in for a casting on Monday.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Rupert would go ape.’

  ‘I know.’

  And that was the truth. Students at L.A.D.S. were not allowed to go for professional auditions or take acting work while they were training. If you did you were kicked off the course. End of. Rupert felt we weren’t ready. Rupert felt we could only be proper actors once we’d earned our stripes. And he was right, we weren’t ready. We’d be lambs to the slaughter.

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘An advert.’

  ‘Oh,’ and she rolled her eyes and looked back out of the window. Drama students didn’t aspire to be in adverts, they aspired to play Shakespeare at the RSC, lead roles in Oscar-winning movies, kooky performance art pieces in out-of-the-way happening spaces.

  ‘I thought it was for something good,’ she added, then blew on the glass and wrote her initials in the mist with her fingers.

  ‘She was really nice,’ I said, which was true. ‘She was a real laugh.’

  ‘She was with that dreadful actress from EastEnders.’

  ‘I don’t really watch it.’ I was more of an Acacia Avenue sort of girl.

  ‘I hate soap actors. They just play themselves,’ she continued. ‘It’s just like, the lowest form of acting.’

  I was going to let it go, it was her birthday after all, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘What, just because she’s working class and has a Cockney accent? And she plays someone with a Cockney accent? That makes her shit, does it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘So, what? You’re posh. So if you play a posh character, that’s not acting?’

  ‘God you twist everything, Jodie.’

  ‘Oh get over yourself, Moth.’

  We completed the rest of the journey in silence. I thought she was pissed and pissed off with me, but when we got to our stop and she didn’t follow me as I got up to get off, I realized she’d fallen asleep. I was half tempted to leave her there, but poked her in the arm with my bus pass and dragged her off with me.

  That night I dreamed
about Our Joey. I went for the audition for the advert and he was sat there behind the desk with Laveenia and they made me do one classical piece and one modern. I kept forgetting my lines and could hear Laveenia tapping her nails on her desktop, then there was a slurping sound. I turned to see that Greg had joined Our Joey and Laveenia behind the desk and was snogging the face off Our Joey. I woke in a cold sweat.

  The next morning I had a big row with Moth, probably because we were both hungover and hanging onto the residual ill-feeling from our night-bus clash, but it centred mostly on me not being able to find my bus pass amongst all the rubbish she’d strewn around the flat. I must have dropped it on the short walk between the bus stop and home as I’d struggled to keep Moth upright, so I laid the blame solely at her door. She was completely non-plussed about my loss, and the mess in the flat, shrugging dismissively and going, ‘It’s just a bus pass.’ I knew full well that if she so desired she could probably rent a Lear jet to fly into college every day, though when I pointed this out she harrumphed into her room and blared out Tracy Chapman till I thought my ears might bleed.

  The music was so loud I only just managed to hear the phone ringing when Laveenia followed through (in a good way) to talk to me about Monday’s casting. I had no intention of going really, but was too polite to tell her, and too fearful I’d blow my cover that I wasn’t a proper actor and was still at drama school. But then, before she hung up, she said something that wetted my whistle.

  ‘The money’s not brilliant. It’s a buyout. Two grand.’

  Two grand! TWO GRAND.

  I had no idea what a buyout was but . . . TWO GRAND?!

  I was sick of having no money. It filled my every waking thought. Everything I looked at had an invisible price tag on it that only I could see. And even the smallest of tags were ones I couldn’t afford. I’d learned all the tricks to make my money go as far as it could: dipping a stale loaf in a bowl of water and then heating it up in the oven to refresh it – or somebody else’s oven to save on the lecky – walking as much as possible to save on bus and tube fares, I even pretended to be a Yugoslavian Princess in exile at the laundrette so the proprietress took pity me and let me use the dryers for free. Two grand was lottery-sized winnings. Two grand would see me comfortable for the rest of my student life. Two grand was . . .