Sweet Sorrow(13)

‘Am I allowed in here?’

‘On t’mistress’s land? Aye, ’course thou art, lad.’ I held the gate open for her, then hesitated. ‘I can’t climb that hill without you,’ she said. ‘You are literally my crutch.’

We walked on, clambering over the sunken earthworks, called a ha-ha, both the source of and the response to weak jokes since the 1700s. Close up, the ornamental gardens seemed scrappy and sun-blasted; dried-out rose beds, a brittle, brown-tipped slab of privet. ‘See that? It’s the famous maze.’

‘Why didn’t you hide in there?’

‘I’m not an amateur!’

‘What kind of house has a maze?’

‘Posh one. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the owners.’

‘I should get back, my bike’s still down—’

‘No one’s going to nick your bike. Come on, they’re really nice. Besides, there’s people here from your school, you can say hello.’

We were crossing the lawn towards a courtyard. I could hear voices. ‘I really should get home.’

‘Just say hello, it won’t take a minute.’ I’d noticed now that she had looped her arm in mine, for support or perhaps to stop me running away, and in a moment we were in a central courtyard, with two trestle tables laden with food and a crowd of ten or so strangers, their backs to us; the sinister private rituals of The Company.

‘Here she is!’ bellowed a florid young man in an un-tucked collarless shirt, flicking a great wing of hair out of his eyes. ‘The champion returns!’ He seemed familiar from somewhere, but now the rest of the coven had turned, cheering and applauding as the girl hobbled towards them. ‘My God, what’s up?’ said the young man, taking her arm, and an older woman with cropped white hair frowned and tutted as if the injury was my fault.

‘I fell over,’ she said. ‘This guy helped me back. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

‘It’s Charlie Lewis,’ said Lucy Tran, the Vietnamese girl from Merton Grange, her mouth tight in frank dislike.

‘Bloody hell, it’s Lewis!’ shouted another voice. Helen Beavis cackled and gathered salad leaves into her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Get out of here, you freak!’

‘I was just on my bike, in the field, and—’

‘Hello, Charlie, welcome aboard!’ said Little Colin Smart, sole male member of the school Drama Club, and now the young man with the fringe marched towards me, dark sweat marks in his armpits, hands outstretched, with such determined force that I took a step backwards into the wall.

‘Hello, Charlie, are you a new recruit? I do hope so! We need you, Charlie!’ and he enclosed my hand entirely in his and pumped it up and down. ‘Grab some salad and we’ll see how we can slot you in,’ he said, and I knew where I had seen this man before and what he represented, and that I should run away.





Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative


In the final weeks of our final term, we’d all been ushered into the hall for a very important assembly with very special guests. Usually this meant something lurid, perhaps a lecture on road safety with gory illustrations. Last term, a policeman had smashed a cauliflower with a mallet to illustrate the effect of ecstasy on the brain and soon after, a nice, nervous lady had come to talk to us about sex within the context of a healthy, loving relationship. The doors had been solemnly closed and the lights dimmed. ‘Could you please be quiet, please?’ she’d pleaded, clicking through the vivid pink and purple slides to laughter and screams and appalled cries. I’d been thinking a lot about work and wondered what strange, twisted career path had brought this woman here, travelling anxiously from school to school with a box of slides showing some varieties of penis. ‘Worst holiday photos ever,’ said Harper, and we laughed as if none of this concerned us. Click, click went the slides. ‘Like snowflakes,’ said the nice lady, ‘no two penises are exactly alike,’ and I wondered – how do they know?

‘How do they know?’

‘They use a microscope,’ said Lloyd and punched me between the legs.

So there was a palpable sense of disappointment as we took our seats in front of a florid, grinning young man with a great wing of hair across his eyes and an angular woman of the same age, her black hair pulled back tightly. In front of them, a beat-box cassette player sat like a dark threat.

Mr Pascoe clapped his hands twice. ‘Settle down, everyone. Lloyd, does the term “everyone” include you or are you possessed of unique qualities hitherto undisclosed? No? Then settle down. Now. I’d like to introduce you to our special guests today; special in their achievements, special in their ambitions—’

‘Special in their needs,’ said Harper, and I laughed.

‘Lewis! Charles Lewis, what is wrong with you?’

‘Sorry, sir!’ I said, looked to the floor, then looked up again and noticed that the young man on stage was directing his grin towards me. He winked collaboratively. I hated that wink.

‘Our guests here are graduates of the University of Oxford! They’re here to tell you about a very exciting project, so please give a big Merton Grange welcome to … bear with me …’ He consulted his notes. ‘Ivor and Alina from …’ Another consultation. ‘The Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative!’