Sweet Sorrow(46)

‘So Charlie, what about—’

‘So d’you want to be an actress, d’you think?’ It’s also possible that she’d noticed what I was doing.

‘Me? God, no. Or rather I don’t know. I mean I like acting, it’s why I’m here. Same reason you’re here—’

‘Of course.’

‘But that’s because I like the people and rehearsals and the words. I like all the corny melodrama of it. Putting on a show, right here in the barn! Three weeks and nothing’s ready! I love all of that, but the actual showing-off bit, I’d be lying if I said I hate it, I’m shy, but it’s a bit … egotistical, isn’t it? A bit daft and vain, all that “look at me, look at me!”’

‘You are really good at it.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘You are. I mean I understood every word and I’m thick.’

‘I don’t think any part of that is true. But anyway, what about—?’

‘So what do you want to do?’

‘When I grow up?’

‘When you grow up.’

‘You sound like a careers officer.’

‘Am I boring?’

‘No, I just … I quite like French, but that’s not a job, is it, far as I know. Wish it was – getting paid for just, I don’t know, smoking and having affairs. Bit of a stereotype there. I had this idea I might do Law, because you get to wear wigs and make speeches, but if that’s the reason then I might as well act, which I don’t want to do because, well, anyway.’ She waved the subject away. ‘It’s a long way off. Except suddenly it isn’t, is it? Now it’s all “choose your options”, which is just another way of saying “narrow the possibilities”. Every time you make a choice, you can hear doors slamming in the distance. They tell you, you can be anything you want, oh, except the following …’

No one had ever told me that I could be anything I wanted. Computer Science, Art, Graphic Design – these were my theoretical fields, and I’d sometimes entertained fantasies of myself at a drawing board in an office full of drawing boards, sleeves rolled up, and though I had no idea what was on the board, I liked the idea of doing something creative but technical, all clutch pencils and shading. But that idea had been abandoned in June. Now, when I tried to imagine anything past September, I felt once again that fear of drifting, an infinity of me and Dad on the sofa, looking for jobs on Ceefax with Pasta Madras on our laps. As far as talent was concerned, I could cross-hatch, I could play Doom and I was working on my tan. Best to change the subject.

‘So why not just do what you’re brilliant at, and be an actress?’

‘That’s very nice of you.’ She shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘The thing is, here I get to play Juliet, out there it’d just be, I don’t know, wenches and milkmaids. I had this English teacher once, he used to really encourage me; you know, a real mentor, a Mr Chips or whatever. We used to enter these school competitions, reciting Shakespeare and poetry, and he said, exact words, I had a nice, pretty face but no one could see it through all that puppy fat.’

‘But you’re not even fat.’

‘Too fat to make a living as an actress, apparently.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Because there are loads of fat actresses?’

‘No, because I think you look …’ In the micro-second between words, I’d skimmed my thesaurus, discarded beautiful as too strong, nice as too bland, great as too groovy. Pretty? Too twee. Attractive? Too frank.

‘… lovely,’ I said, doubting the word as it left my mouth. It sounded like luv-er-ly, three syllables.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, all right then.’

And shouldn’t it be luv-ly? Just two?

‘So what about you?’

Too late now. In my distraction, I’d allowed a question through. ‘Are you going to take up acting professionally, or—?’ and she almost made it to the end of the question before a blurt of laughter stopped her.

‘Bit rude,’ I said.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘I thought I was pretty good.’

‘You were, you really were! I’m sorry.’

‘And that was just the first time reading it.’

‘Really? Then you were amazing.’

‘Not amazing, I was just trying out something different.’

‘It was a choice.’

‘Yeah, I want to play him as someone who leaves a gap between each word. Like he’s had a bad accident.’

‘Blow to the head.’

‘That’s his – what d’you call it?’

‘His backstory?’

‘His backstory. He’s been, I don’t know, kicked in the head by Tybalt’s horse.’

‘It’s a bold and fresh approach.’

‘I think so.’ We walked on, grinning. ‘After the read-through, Miles came up to me and said, “You’re not going to do it like that, are you?”’

She laughed. ‘I saw that. I watched him when you were reading and he looked really angry. Like “I can’t be expected to work with this!”’

‘I think it’s ’cause he’s jealous.’