Sweet Sorrow(27)

‘So what are you doing here?’

‘I’m doing the set! Production design. I did it last year, it was fun; I’m not ashamed, I’m interested, I’m nurturing my skills. What I’m not doing, Lewis, is wasting everyone’s time.’

‘Well, maybe you’ve got me wrong.’

‘I don’t get people wrong.’

‘Why can’t I be interested?’

‘In Shakespeare? Ha!’

‘Why not? It’s better than sitting at home all day. Let’s … let’s see what happens.’

‘Fine,’ she said and placed both hands on my shoulders. ‘But if you’re going to do it, Lewis, you’ve got to do it properly. It’s no good sitting out and sneering, you’re not with the boys now. You’ve got to commit!’





Romeo


Somewhere between the courtyard and the Great Lawn, Fran had disappeared. Short of hiding in the woods, I had no option but to join the cast, lolling in the sun while Romeo held forth on the demands of playing the eponymous role, his handsome head resting on his meaty arm. The eponymous role, he noted, wasn’t always the best role, and yet it was the eponymous role that always came his way and this was his curse, always to be eponymous, using the word so frequently and with such emphasis that I began to wonder if there was someone in the play called Eponymous. Behold, here comes the Duke Eponymous …

‘I mean, look at Othello!’ he said.

Alex, the skinny black kid who’d sculpted me, laughed. ‘Miles, I would love to see your Othello.’

‘Hey, it’s a great part. As a white actor, I would refuse to play it—’

‘That’s very gracious of you—’

‘—but Iago’s a better role. Like in this play, it’s my name in the title, but I wonder if I’m naturally more of a Mercutio.’

And Alex laughed again. ‘Oh, you mean my role? The role in which I have been cast?’

‘And Alex mate, you’ll be amazing. But with the eponymous role, there’s such a weight of expectation, like it’s all about me.’

I watched him resentfully. He was handsome, I suppose, with the kind of hearty, old-fashioned good looks you might find in an old B-movie, fighting a stop-motion dinosaur. ‘Handsome and he knows it’ is the phrase my mum would use and, as if hearing this, the boy turned to me, pointing in lieu of my name. ‘What’s the better part, Romeo or Mercutio?’

I meant to shrug, but twitched.

‘Who are you playing?’ he said.

‘Me? Don’t know yet.’

‘What school d’you go to?’

‘Merton Grange,’ I said and Romeo nodded, as if this somehow provided an answer.

‘Same school as us,’ said Colin Smart, who had been hugging his knees and gazing at the boy throughout.

‘Bit of a first for Charlie,’ said Lucy Tran, nastily. ‘Not really famous for his acting at Merton Grange.’

‘I’m Miles,’ said Romeo. ‘I’m at Hadley Heath, like our George over there.’

Miles indicated a hunched boy sitting a little way off, eating a banana and reading an old Penguin copy of Madame Bovary in the merciful shade of a wall.

‘Hm?’ The boy looked up through aviator frames, the lenses as thick as aquarium glass. He wore what looked like a white school shirt underneath an unnecessary jumper, his hair a cap of glossy black like a Beatles wig, his skin inflamed, the colour of raspberry juice around his mouth and nose.

‘George’s part of my crew, aren’t you, Georgie?’ barked Miles.

The pimpled boy shook his head. ‘No, Miles, I’m not part of your crew,’ then, returning to his novel, ‘you absolute simpleton.’

Miles gave a hearty Sir Launcelot laugh then lunged at him, holding George’s chest down with one hand, mashing the banana in George’s fist with the other. Five miles from town, in its own high-walled compound, Hadley Heath was the kind of private school whose name is prefixed with the word ‘minor’. With good reason, the students tended to avoid the town centre and, like snow leopards, it was almost unheard of to observe their behaviour close up. We sat and watched in awkward silence until –

‘Hey, Miles,’ said Alex, speaking up. ‘Miles, maybe stop that?’

Miles rolled away, wiping his hand on the grass. ‘We’ve got a really strong drama department at Hadley Heath.’

‘Why are you such an arsehole, Parish?’ muttered George.

‘Amazing studio space, really versatile, we do a lot of stuff in the round, you’re practically in the audience’s lap. I’ve played Pal Joey in Pal Joey there, Arturo Ui in Arturo Ui, Cyrano in Cyrano—’

‘Headline in the student paper: “Cyrano Ham”.’

‘Don’t provoke me, George! We just did Murder in the Cathedral—’

‘Miles played the Cathedral,’ said George.

‘Actually, I was Thomas à Becket, which is quite a marathon. Okay, it’s not the Dane, which is the role I really want to play, but it’s pretty substantial.’

‘Which Dane’s that, Parish?’ said George, still pulling banana from his hair. ‘The eponymous Dane?’

‘Don’t make me come back there, George, you little squit.’