ONE DAY(5)

But as he made his decision, her mouth stretched open into a wide smile and without opening her eyes she said:

‘So, what do you reckon, Dex?’

‘About what, Em?’

‘Me and you. Is it love, d’you think?’ and she gave a low laugh, her lips tightly closed.

‘Just go to sleep, will you?’

‘Stop staring up my nose then.’ She opened her eyes, blue and green, bright and shrewd. ‘What’s tomorrow?’ she mumbled.

‘Today you mean?’

‘Today. This bright new day that awaits us.’

‘It’s a Saturday. Saturday all day. St Swithin’s Day as a matter of fact.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘Tradition. If it rains today it’ll rain for the next forty days, or all summer, or something like that.’

She frowned. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Not meant to. It’s a superstition.’

‘Raining where? It’s always raining somewhere.’

‘On St Swithin’s grave. He’s buried outside Winchester Cathedral.’

‘How come you know all this?’

‘I went to school there.’

‘Well la-di-da,’ she mumbled into the pillow.

‘“If on St Swithin it doth rain/Something dum-di-dum again.”’

‘That’s a beautiful poem.’

‘Well, I’m paraphrasing.’

She laughed once again, then raised her head sleepily. ‘But Dex?’

‘Em?’

‘If it doesn’t rain today?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What are you doing later?’

Tell her that you’re busy.

‘Nothing much,’ he said.

‘So shall we do something then? Me and you, I mean?’

Wait ’til she’s asleep then sneak away.

‘Yeah. Alright,’ he said. ‘Let’s do something.’

She allowed her head to drop onto the pillow once more. ‘Brand new day,’ she murmured.

‘Brand new day.’





CHAPTER TWO


Back to Life


SATURDAY 15 JULY 1989

Wolverhampton and Rome

Girls’ Changing Rooms Stoke Park Comprehensive School Wolverhampton 15 July 1989



Ciao, Bella!

How are you? And how is Rome? The Eternal City is all very well, but I’ve been here in Wolverhampton for two days now and that’s felt pretty eternal (though I can reveal that the Pizza Hut here is excellent, just excellent).

Since I last saw you I have decided to take that job I was telling you about, with Sledgehammer Theatre Co-operative and for the last four months we have been devising, rehearsing and touring with ‘Cruel Cargo’, an Arts Council-funded spectacular about the slave-trade told through the medium of story, folk song and some pretty shocking mime. I have enclosed a crudely photocopied leaflet so that you can see what a classy number it really is.

Cruel Cargo is a TIE piece (that’s Theatre-in-Education to you) aimed at 11–13-year-olds that takes the provocative view that slavery was a Bad Thing. I play Lydia, the, um, well, yes, the LEAD ROLE as a matter of fact, the spoilt and vain daughter of the wicked Sir Obadiah Grimm (can you tell from his name that he’s not very nice?) and in the show’s most powerful moment I come to realise that all my pretty things, all my dresses (indicate dress) and jewels (likewise) are bought with the blood of my fellow human beings (sob-sob) and that I feel dirty (stare at hands as if SEEING THE BLOOD) dirty to my SOOOOOOUUUUL. It’s very powerful stuff, though ruined last night by some kids throwing Maltesers at my head.

But seriously, actually, it’s not as bad as that, not in context, and I don’t know why I’m being cynical, defence-mechanism probably. We actually get a great response from the kids who see it, the ones that don’t throw stuff, and we do these workshops in schools that are just really exciting. It’s staggering how little these kids know about their cultural heritage, even the West Indian kids, about where they come from. I’ve enjoyed writing it too and it’s given me lots of ideas for other plays and stuff. So I think it’s worthwhile even if you think I’m wasting my time. I really, really think we can change things, Dexter. I mean they had loads of radical theatre in Germany in the Thirties and look what a difference that made. We’re going to banish colour prejudice from the West Midlands, even if we have to do it one child at a time.

There are four of us in the cast. Kwame is the Noble Slave and despite us playing mistress and servant we actually get along alright (though I asked him to get me a packet of crisps in this café the other day and he looked at me like I was OPPRESSING him or something). But he’s nice and serious about the work, though he did cry a lot in rehearsals, which I thought was a bit much. He’s a bit of a weeper, if you know what I mean. In the play there’s meant to be this powerful sexual tension between us, but once again life is failing to imitate art.

Then there’s Sid, who plays my wicked father Obadiah. I know your whole childhood was spent playing French cricket on a bloody great chamomile lawn and you never did anything as déclassé as watch the telly, but Sid used to be quite famous, on this cop show called City Beat and his disgust at being reduced to THIS shines through. He flatly refuses to mime, like it’s beneath him to be seen with an object that isn’t really there, and every other sentence begins ‘when I was on telly’ which is his way of saying ‘when I was happy’. Sid pees in washbasins and has these scary polyester trousers which you WIPE DOWN instead of washing and subsists on service station minced beef pasties, and me and Kwame think he’s secretly really racist, but apart from that he’s a lovely man, a lovely, lovely man.