New World in the Morning

by Stephen Benatar

  “You need to be a lot less cheeky. This is a meaningful discussion.”

  “Sam, are you really serious about this?” Junie was staring at me as though I was someone who’d just wandered in off the street and helped himself to vegetables.

  “Yes, indeed I am. About what, precisely?”

  She spread her hands, a little helplessly. “Well, about wanting to go on the stage.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  There was a pause. I said: “I realize that I may have been sounding a tad frivolous but even so—”

  “Oh! In a minute he’s going to tell us he was only joking,” interrupted Matt, sadly. “I mean, about ‘superficial’ and the rest of it.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. He’d clearly forgotten yesterday’s kiss on the back of my neck and what had given rise to it. Well, only to be expected. Thoroughly normal. Perhaps tomorrow he’d remember it. Or ten years from tomorrow. Or fifty.

  “But even so,” I continued, “you’d hardly have wanted me to get all intense and heavy about it, would you?”

  “Daddy, I think you’ve been sounding fine.”

  “Thank you, darling. I appreciate that.”

  Junie began to giggle.

  The giggling went on. She had to wipe her eyes. The children joined in—me, as well—puzzled though we all were.

  “Mimsy and Pim!” she said. “Mimsy and Pim would have a fit. Only remember how they reacted when you decided to leave the bank!”

  “Is that why you’re laughing?”

  She nodded.

  “Your mother and father,” I observed gently, “have no say whatever in the way we live our lives.”

  In spite of her own implied criticism, there followed a slightly uncomfortable silence. I had often wished—in one respect, anyhow—that the loan they’d made us when we bought the house hadn’t been converted into a gift as soon as I could have begun to pay them back.

  “It’s none of Mimsy’s business!” declared Matt, hotly, apparently deciding, after all, that perhaps I did have the looks and unconsciously relegating his grandfather to the subordinate position which indeed he held.

  “Now, stop it, that isn’t respectful,” said Junie. “And all this is getting out of hand! To be honest, Sam, I’d probably quite enjoy managing the shop but I thought you were perfectly happy with the way things were. It never occurred to me—”

  “I am,” I answered. “I am.” I’d finished my meal and now I went round behind her to kiss the top of her head. “I’m as happy as anybody ever could be. I have an excellent wife and two excellent children. What more could a man ask for? It’s just that occasionally one likes to dream. To dream of doing something a little more colourful. To dream of…” I hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I became self-mockingly grandiloquent. “Of sailing into unmapped waters, of spreading one’s wings like a wandering albatross—or a sunbird—or a roc. Of realizing perhaps a larger bit of one’s potential.”

  “Trust our dad! Who else would ever spread his wings like a rock? Who else would even think of it?”

  “R-o-c,” I smiled. “As you very well appreciate, little monster.” Matt had been all but weaned on the adventures of Sinbad.

  “Yet getting back to the subject in hand…?” prompted Junie.

  I gave a shrug. “Oh—as I said—I’m probably being adolescent. Stargazing. After all…out of every thousand expiring actors how many d’you suppose ever really get there?”

  “Possibly,” said Matt, “aspiring ones might stand a fractionally better chance.”

  “Why? What did I say? Nonsense,” after he’d explained, “you’re imagining things! I’ll go to make the coffee.”

  Junie called after me. “But you could if you truly wanted. If you thought there’d be the slightest possibility. I wouldn’t try to stop you.”

  “Yes, go on, Dad, why don’t you?” shouted Matt. “You old expiring actor, you! And anyway what’s so wrong, I’d like to know, about being adolescent?”

  “Bet you could, Daddy,” added Ella. “You’re by far the hunkiest dad in Deal.”

  I put my head back through the doorway.

  “You’re very sweet, all of you! We’ll have to see. No promises, mind. I certainly don’t mean to rush into anything. I plan to be incredibly circumspect.”

  Head withdrawn. Head put back again.

  “And, Matt, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an adolescent! Nothing! Don’t you think it for an instant.”

  Junie followed me out into the kitchen. “Oh, by the way, Mimsy and Pim were heartbroken to hear about Susie. But they’re keeping their fingers crossed. And if there’s anything they can do…”

  “That’s very kind,” I murmured.

  “And they thought you were totally wonderful yesterday. But they told me not to tell you.”

  I laughed. Junie went back to fetch more things off the table—or possibly to encourage the children to do so. For the moment, I forgot about making coffee. Supposing I could get into RADA? It wasn’t feasible, of course…but just supposing? Not simply would it be a means of expanding my horizons: of maybe one day actually travelling a bit, of getting really overseas: to New York perhaps (to check out the delis), San Francisco, Hollywood. It would also mean that, sooner than this, at least during RADA’s term-time, I’d be able to stay partly in London: an end to any problem over being with Moira. (And indeed wouldn’t that alone represent an expansion to my horizons!) It seemed too good to be true, a readymade solution when as yet I’d hardly been on the lookout for one: thinking no further than that little house in Silver Street, which I now saw would have been hopelessly impractical. But this changed everything. Moira in the week; Junie and the children at weekends. The ingredients for paradise.

  For paradise… Capten, art tha listenin’ there below?

  And—who knew—into the bargain I might even make a reputation?

  The possibilities seemed endless.

  In the end I didn’t even go to Ruth Minton’s. The deep blue sea still beckoned but this was a deeper, bluer, wider, warmer, infinitely more inviting ocean than any that had ever lapped upon the shores of Dover or of Deal.

  And to expand a little on that Rattigan metaphor…the sleeping prince had finally—finally!—awoken.

  Later, he wrote a lengthy letter to RADA, this newly arisen prince; addressed it simply to The Secretary, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. If it was meant to get there, then it would get there…and I knew for certain that it was. I asked for information regarding grants, scholarships, auditions. I listed the plays I’d been in and let them have a recent photograph I liked—it had been taken on the beach and made me look all of twenty-eight—together with five hundred words on why I thought I should be suitable. I knew full well I had to sell myself.

  I enclosed a stamped addressed envelope, and copies of cuttings from the East Kent Mercury.

  The mouths of pillar boxes were too small, so for the second time that day I walked to the post office. At such an hour it seemed odd to be doing this without Susie, practically disloyal—and, naturally, there wouldn’t be any collection before morning—yet at the same time it was comforting to suppose that my fate was now stamped, sealed, very nearly official, and would soon be winging its way into the hands of arbiters. Or at least—not to get too metaphoric or highflown or roc-like about it—to suppose the envelope was.

  (Though for Junie’s sake—no, for all our sakes—I certainly wanted to remain rocklike. As rocklike as ever.)

  That night the count was up to almost a thousand…

  Yow-w-w-w!

  11

  The following morning partial sanity returned—although, thankfully, only partial. For the first moment, I felt alarmed by what I’d done, but then I laughed and shrugged and thought oh what the hell. Cast your bread upon the waters…nothing ventured, nothing gained! All my life, I now believed, I’d played things far too safe. I was thirty-six. In another four year
s…! Thank God I’d woken up in time.

  Ungrudging endorsement: the phone at the shop rang merely a few minutes after I had walked in.

  “Sam? Good morning. This is Moira Sheffield.”

  I’d recognized her voice on the first syllable. Although my heart at once reacted it hadn’t had time to monkey with either my pitch or my phrasing. “Sweet heaven,” I declared. “I was just thinking of you.”

  “Really? What were you thinking?”

  “Only the worst.”

  “What a relief! How are you?”

  “Fantastic. You?”

  “Also pretty well. But listen, Sam. I’ve decided I shan’t be coming back to Deal next weekend, I—”

  “Oh, no!”

  I shouldn’t have said that, obviously I shouldn’t, at least not with such emphasis. The words had been shocked from me. I felt cold with disappointment.

  “But wait,” she said, “let me tell you why. I’ve been offered two tickets for that new American musical, the one at present getting so much hype, and frankly I hadn’t the chutzpah to turn them down. And then the title seemed to clinch it. Half a Farthing, Sam Sparrow? Oh, what relevance! They’re for next Saturday evening. I wondered if you’d like to come.”

  “My God.”

  She laughed. “Is that a yes?”

  “Exact translation: I should love to come. There’s nothing that could possibly give me any greater pleasure…” Yet I was speaking with deliberation. My brain was trying frantically to get to grips. In my own mind the sentence wasn’t finished but she didn’t realize this.

  “I’m so glad. I think that—despite the hype—the show should turn out to be fun.”

  “I haven’t really caught the hype, just the hit tune, which is as catchy as all get-out.” (Strange lyric, though: ‘You feel that you’re on trial, and so you’re in denial, you want to cry and run a mile, but still you lie and still you smile, and smile and smile and smile…’ Rather dopey.)

  “Yes, hard to get it out of your mind, once it’s there; no doubt we’ll drive each other crazy! Now what I also thought was this: is there any chance of your making a full weekend out of it—coming here on Friday night—getting your assistant (Liz tells me she feels sure you have one) to be in charge on Saturday? There’s plenty of room at the flat and I’ve already made some plans for interesting things we could do together—you said the other day you don’t know London awfully well…” But then she faltered. “Or do you think I’m being presumptuous?”

  “Presumptuous? Good heavens, no. It all sounds out of this world, but…”

  “Is it your grandmother? I was worried it mightn’t be as easy as I hoped.”

  “Yes. May I ring you back? Say—in an hour? Will you be home?”

  She gave me her number. “See what you can manage, then.” I promised that I would. We ended, a bit bathetically, talking about transport.

  Forty minutes later I rang Junie.

  “Darling, guess what! Guess whom I’ve just heard from!”

  “RADA. They’ve offered you a place.”

  “Not yet,” I said, “although I admit they’re being a little slow.”

  “Then I give up,” she said. “Who?”

  “John Caterham.”

  “John Caterham! Good gracious! You mean the John Caterham who was in our class at school?”

  “As opposed to all the other John Caterhams we know?”

  “But how—why—where? I wouldn’t have thought he’d even got your number! Or knew what the shop was called! Where was he phoning from? Or do you mean it was a letter?”

  “No, I spoke to him. He asked after you, of course. Sent his love. Couldn’t believe our children are now old enough to be at the County High or that old Hinchcliff still hasn’t retired.”

  “But what about his own children? Aren’t they—?”

  “Remember he married later than we did. Well, come to that, I imagine everyone married later than we did.”

  “How many has he?”

  “Three. But listen, Junie, let me tell you why he phoned. He’s still living in that place near Lincoln and they’ve got some important cricket fixture next Sunday, but one of their best players has broken his leg and John’s desperate for a good replacement. He asked if I could go up for the whole weekend and I said yes because, although it’s actually a bit of a bind, it does sound as if they’re in a fix and I was really quite flattered. Mavis will look after the shop on Saturday but I said you might pop in and relieve her at lunchtime. Naturally John would have asked you and the kids but his wife’s away at the moment—her mother isn’t well—and they’ve got the workmen in and anyway what with its being Ted and Yvonne’s anniversary celebration on Sunday…”

  The gabble was to let her understand it was all a fait accompli. I had no fears she’d stand in my way but I hoped she wouldn’t sound reproachful.

  Which she didn’t. Not at all. I should have known better.

  “Darling, obviously you’ve got to go! It’s like you’re answering a Mayday signal and although we’re going to miss you—of course we are—you could scarcely have refused. But just imagine! John Caterham! After all these years!”

  So then I phoned the station: as Moira owned a car we’d both considered it unnecessary for me to drive—and anyway I wouldn’t have wanted to leave Junie and the children dependent upon lifts. I was just finishing the call when Mavis arrived. It was lucky we’d agreed she needn’t begin until ten—because even in the midst of tidying or cleaning she was apt to thrust her head around the door to share a thought or put a question and I could hardly, suddenly, have requested her not to. Besides that, there were certain areas of the shop from which a phone call could be heard…especially when the radio wasn’t on…and I wouldn’t have wanted to be asked (she was fully capable of it) why had I been speaking so softly and what guilty secret did I have to hide. Therefore, to guarantee myself a good five minutes of privacy, I sent Mavis out to buy rum babas before I rang back Moira.

  And found the line engaged!

  I counted, in a determinedly disciplined fashion, up to fifty. Then rang again.

  Walked round the shop and made myself breathe deeply; this time counted up to sixty. My pulse rate had gone mad and even my bowels threatened treachery. My bladder, too. The patisserie was only down the road and what if on my third attempt the line continued busy…?

  It didn’t.

  Benevolent heaven. In reality, the delay couldn’t have lasted longer than three minutes. I relaxed.

  Well, up to a point I did. I still needed to impress. And to hurry things a bit.

  I said: “If I leave here mid-afternoon on Friday I should get to Victoria at six-forty-eight. Precisely. Which means, of course, I’ll have a pretty long wait at Dover Priory. I hope you appreciate that.”

  “Oh, I do! I shall be at Victoria at six-forty-seven-and-a-half in a strenuous attempt to compensate!”

  “Thank you. To strike a more serious note, however, you don’t have to come to meet me. I used to be a boy scout; could probably still find my compass.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. To strike an even more serious note, however, I should like to come to meet you.”

  “And to strike the most serious note of all, however, I was simply being polite—haven’t any wish whatever to reject a sympathetic guide. No, on the contrary, I’ll carry a white stick and tap my way along the platform like blind Pew.”

  “You’re better-looking than he was.”

  “That’s a weight off my mind. I can’t believe I’ve only met you twice.”

  “It’s going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it. Oh—and while I think of it—will you bring your dinner jacket?”

  “I… Yes, of course.”

  “We’ll do this thing in style.”

  “You bet we will.” I heard the bell above the shop door. “Oh, damn, I’m afraid I’ve got to go! Customers.”

  “It’s all right, Mr G, only yours truly!” called out Mavis, over the partition.

&nbs
p; “Be seeing you Friday, then. Ciao!”

  “Ciao!” answered Moira. I cursed the interruption, even while I sensed it was a blessing. Left to myself I might have gone on talking for an hour. That would have been lovely, but…but I wanted to play it cool. I was totally without experience of intrigue, yet knew I had her interest and also knew, according to received wisdom, that at this stage it would be safer to retain a little mystery, keep her guessing, separate my heart from my sleeve.

  “You are an idiot, Mr G—it was only yours truly,” Mavis repeated. She’d now opened the office door. “Sorry about that.”

  I tilted back my chair and hitched both thumbs into my trouser pockets. I was magnanimous. “Nay, lass, think nowt on’t.”

  She giggled, held up the paper bag, took my change out of her purse. “I had to get meringues. They hadn’t got babas.”

  “No sweat,” I said. With Mavis I could play it cool.

  Yet even with Mavis it was partly touch-and-go. I felt I could have let out a whoop. Felt I could have run a mile. (Literally.) Could have jumped into the sea with all my clothes on. Jumped into the sea without a stitch. Kicked a football (we had one), hurled a cricket ball (we had one), watched them either disappear above a rooftop or else re-descend to make the perfect header, present the perfect catch. I could have rung the bell on one of those things which test your strength at fairgrounds—felt I could have broken the machine.

  But I merely sat there at my desk, with the most active thing about me being my brain. “Too soon to make the coffee?” asked Mavis.

  “What?”

  “Coffee?”

  “Coffee? If you like. Up to you.” Yes—sure. There were times when I could be remarkably chilled out. “Hey, Mavis. I want you to tell me something. And I want you to be perfectly candid.”

  “Oh, Lord! I hate it when anybody says that.”

  “Does my hair need cutting?”

  “Is that it?”

  “What?”

  “The thing I’ve got to be perfectly candid about.”

  “You mustn’t ever underestimate,” I said, “the importance of wearing your hair the proper length.”

  “Mine or yours?” she asked, playfully. I had grown as used to the unruliness of her hair as to the exuberance of her breathing. I had to ride out my lack of tact; hope she either hadn’t noticed it or hadn’t been offended.