Sweet Sorrow(45)

‘In a town with more than one Asian person,’ said Lucy.

‘Fine, forget it!’ said Miles, holding both hands in front of him. ‘Christ, I thought there were no wrong answers!’

‘Okay, move on, what else divides people? Remember, we’re talking in general, not necessarily in the play.’

‘Can I just say – age,’ said Polly. ‘I think there’s a terrific gap between the generations, both in the play and in life.’

‘Good, good, good,’ said Ivor, and while the older cast members nodded vigorously, the younger ones seemed keen to move on.

‘Class,’ said George, his hand over his mouth.

‘In life perhaps,’ said Alina, ‘but in the play, Shakespeare is careful to point out that they’re “both alike in dignity”.’

‘Or, sort of connected – culture,’ said George. ‘Taste, music. Cultural tribes.’

‘Blur versus Oasis.’

‘North and south.’

‘No!’ Alina winced. ‘No more regional accents, I beg you.’

‘East Sussex versus West Sussex.’

‘Besides, they’re both from Verona, so—’

‘Football!’ said Keith, our Friar Laurence. ‘So it’s like a United/City, Arsenal/Tottenham thing.’

‘Come on you Spurs!’ chanted Colin Smart.

‘Oh, please,’ said Lucy.

‘Education,’ said Helen. ‘It’s like when we were at school, and the Merton Grange boys would always duff up the Chatsborne kids down the precinct.’

‘They didn’t always duff them up,’ said Fran.

‘Well, no, we did,’ said Helen, laughing. ‘Always.’

‘Hey!’ said Fran and kicked Helen’s chair.

‘Mer-ton Grange, Mer-ton Grange,’ chanted Colin Smart.

‘Just grow up!’ said Lucy.

‘No, that’s good,’ said Ivor, ‘we can use that aggression, we can use that feeling.’

‘But isn’t the problem,’ said a voice that I was surprised to find was my own. ‘Sorry – isn’t the problem that there is no reason? In the play, I mean. All the stuff people fight about in life, it might be irrational but it’s something you can give a name to. In the play, it’s not ’cause one side’s posh or black or white or whatever, it’s just what they’re used to. Fighting, lashing out, smashing things up. The boys mainly. They’re just confused, angry boys.’

Ivor took this in and nodded, and I looked back to the floor. The discussion moved on and in the end it was decided that the Montagues could maybe wear red T-shirts and the Capulets perhaps blue, and that this would probably be enough to make the point.





Hobbies and Interests: Socialising


‘Hello there,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

‘I thought I’d walk with you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Unless you want to rush off.’

‘No, let’s walk. I’d like that.’

And so this became our routine, like walking to school with someone, self-conscious and formal to begin with then eventually a habit. Along the drive, left at the gatehouse, down the long, tree-shaded lane, taking care to walk a little way behind the rest of the crowd, in no hurry to reach the bottom of the hill.

The ground had dried out but the air under the canopy of trees retained the freshness of the rain, the scent of bruised leaves and warm damp earth. We began with certain biographical information, the kind of questions you might find on a form. I’d read in some men’s magazine that a subtle way of making girls like you was to get them to talk about themselves. ‘Ask questions,’ it advised, ‘make them think you’re interested,’ and so I soon discovered that her parents were Graham and Claire and she liked them about as much as you could like parents. ‘I mean I don’t call them by their first names or anything, we’re not weird.’ Graham Fisher was something administrative in the railways, was pragmatic and serious and worked long hours – ‘but at least he makes the trains run on time. That’s his joke, his one joke. He’s a real dad, if you know what I mean.’ Claire was a librarian in the next town over; she was the arty, bookish one and also her best friend, ‘which sounds weird, I know. Maybe I should get more friends. My own age, who haven’t given birth to me. Anyway, she’s a laugh, Mum; I’m lucky, there’s nothing I can’t tell her. There’s loads I don’t tell her, but in theory. No complaints, not yet anyway. I’m sure I will. One day.’ As with people who had good teeth and confident smiles, I was instinctively suspicious of people who got on with their parents, imagining that they must have some secret binding them together. Cannibalism perhaps. She even seemed to like her brother, who was older and very smart and studying Maths at Sheffield University. ‘He’s the clever one. That’s what they call him, Clever One, as a joke, which I love as you can imagine.’

At intervals, she’d leave a gap for me to fill in my part of the form, but I would leap in with my pre-prepared questions, slapping them down like cards in a game of snap, priming the next question while she answered. This gave our chat an edgy, interrogatory air, as if I was hoping she might accidentally confess to a series of local burglaries, and the effort involved meant that I couldn’t always listen as carefully as I wanted to.