Sweet Sorrow(43)

A small crowd had gathered around her now, to Miles’ clear resentment. ‘She’ll be okay, if she does the work,’ he said, and stalked off. Too intimidated to speak to her, I decided to go outside.

‘Hey, Charlie,’ she said as I passed, ‘well done!’ I winced and hurried on.

The sun was out now, as emphatic as the rain it had replaced, and outside the door, Alina and Ivor were standing, heads close together, wrestling with a problem, the problem of me.

‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Alina, her hair pulled back to its full extent, hoisting her eyebrows into exasperation. ‘So – what did you think? About the new role?’

‘Um, well, I was a bit unsure …’

‘Yes, it felt like you were feeling your way!’ said Ivor.

‘It was as if you understood perhaps one word in nine,’ said Alina.

‘Alina!’ said Ivor.

‘Have you thought about stage management?’

I was about to be fired, and I felt the most wonderful relief. ‘If you want to give it to someone else—’

‘No! No, we’d love you to take a crack at it,’ said Ivor.

‘Besides, at this moment there is no one else,’ said Alina.

‘Though that’s not the reason!’

‘Well …’

‘We’d like you to persevere, for a week maybe.’

‘Okay,’ I said, keen to get away.

‘But can I ask,’ said Ivor, lowering his voice, ‘have you ever actually been in a play before?’

I laughed. ‘What do you think?’

‘So,’ said Alina, ‘what brings you here, Charlie?’

‘Um. To meet new people?’ I began to look around for an alibi. A little way off Alex, Mercutio, was sitting on a bench, rolling a cigarette, a trilby tipped back on his head. New people. I raised a hand to Alex.

‘Well, you’re going to be great,’ said Ivor. ‘In time.’

‘And if not,’ said Alina, ‘trust me – stage management!’

I raised my hand again. At school I’d learnt that it was not appropriate for a boy to comment favourably on another boy’s looks or to even think such a thing, but Alex was extremely beautiful, long and languorous like a dancer. In the role, in life, he had the same amused look, a single bracket on one side of his mouth, amusement that I now felt must be directed at me. But he swept the rain water from the bench with the edge of his hand.

‘Come. Join me.’ Approaching, I felt, as I always would with Alex, that I should ask for his autograph.

Alex Asante – he was the other one with talent. We’d felt it the moment he’d started to speak. In one of our early lessons, our French teacher had promised that if we worked hard enough we’d eventually enter a kind of trance state in which the foreignness would fall away and we’d speak, think and even dream in a beautiful new language. I’d never found myself remotely near this state – I’d walked out of the exam after half an hour – but there’d been something appealing about the idea, and, as with Fran, there was the same kind of immediacy when Alex spoke. I had no idea who Queen Mab was, or why she didn’t turn up on stage, but I knew what he was getting at, and I felt I ought to let him know.

‘You’re very good at this.’

He waved a hand dismissively. ‘Only by comparison.’

‘No, really, I mean it.’

He lifted his shoulders high, then dropped them. ‘It’s my standard-issue gay-outsider performance,’ he said. ‘You did very well.’

‘I was shit.’

He laughed. ‘Just think of yourself as … unformed clay.’

‘I think they’re going to sack me.’

He tapped the words out on my knee. ‘You. Did. Just. Fine. Besides, they can’t sack you, the Arts Council won’t let them. It’s about the experience! Transforming young lives through Shakespeare! For as long as you turn up, you’re in. As long as you’re keen.’

‘Oh, he’s keen, aren’t you, Charlie?’ said Helen, arriving now. ‘He’s very keen – Fran and I even had a bet on it.’ She held the pound coin out between finger and thumb. ‘Fran said you wouldn’t come back, and I said you would and I bet her a quid and so I won.’ She ruffled my hair. ‘Bless!’

‘What’s going on?’ said Alex.

‘Charlie’s in love.’

Fran was approaching. ‘Helen, pack it in,’ I pleaded.

‘He’s in love with theatre, isn’t that right, Charlie? That’s why he’s here. Oh, hi Fran! I was just saying what a complete theatre-nut Charlie is.’

‘Really?’ said Fran.

‘It’s a recent thing.’ I shrugged. ‘More as, you know, a watcher.’

Helen grinned. ‘I can’t tell you how often, at school, Charlie and his mates will be, I don’t know, setting fire to someone’s homework, and one of the boys will say, hey, this is just like that scene in Hedda Gabler.’

‘Helen …’

‘We have to tell him: Charlie, for just one minute, stop talking about plays. But no, it’s Pinter this, Stoppard that, Chekhov, Chekhov, Chekhov …’

‘Oh, really?’ said Alex, head to one side, amused. ‘What’s your favourite?’