Sweet Sorrow(48)

Then there was the whiff of pretension, superiority and self-satisfaction that clung to all forms of ‘the arts’. To perform in a play or a band, to put your picture on display in the corridor, to publish your story or, God forbid, your poem in the school magazine, was to proclaim your uniqueness and self-belief and so to make yourself a target. Anything placed on a pedestal was likely to get knocked off, and it was simply common sense to stay quiet and keep any creative ambitions private.

Especially for a boy. The only acceptable talent was in sport, in which case it was fine to strut and boast, but my talents lay elsewhere, very possibly nowhere. The only thing that I was good at, drawing – doodling, really – was acceptable as long as it remained technical and free of self-expression. There was nothing of me in the still life of a half-peeled orange, the close-up of an eye with a window reflected in it, the planet-sized spaceship; no beauty, emotion or self-revelation, just draughtsmanship. All other forms of expression – singing, dancing, writing, even reading or speaking a foreign language – were considered not just gay but also posh, and few things carried more stigma at Merton Grange than this combination. This was why our school productions were populated almost entirely by girls in trousers with stick-on moustaches, speaking in low voices. Like the Elizabethan theatre in reverse, there was something disreputable about boys who did plays, and Shakespeare plays in particular. Shakespeare was play-acting in poetry, and all the beat-boxes and knife fights in the world could do nothing to change that fact.

So I had joined a cult. We even looked like a cult, all of us standing in a circle in loose garments in the morning light, barefoot on the lawn of a large secluded mansion.

‘… and now I want you all to roll back up from the base of your spine, one vertebra at a time into a standing position … and now reach up, up, up high towards the sun …’

No one could ever know that I was reaching for the sun. I reminded myself of the reason I was here, standing just a little to my right …

‘Charlie!’ shouted Alina. ‘Eyes, please! Focus!’

Alina had none of Ivor’s spaniel-like bounce. She carried with her an air of furious disappointment, like a cabaret chanteuse who has unaccountably found herself booked for a children’s party, and we would stiffen as she walked amongst us, prodding at locked knees, pushing heads down closer to the ground as vertebrae popped, digging her fingers under rib-cages to check the engagement of the diaphragm. I didn’t even know I had a diaphragm.

‘Deep breaths! Really feel the air. Don’t forget to breathe … and roll forward once again. Charlie – how can you be expected to move freely like this?’

In one last puny and self-defeating act of rebellion, I was still wearing jeans rather than the vests and jogging bottoms that the rest of the company wore, everything either too baggy or too tight. Alex was practically in a body stocking, but dancewear was a line I would not cross. What if I was knocked off my bike?

‘You can’t move like this, and if you can’t move you can’t act. Tomorrow, please come prepared for the work in hand.’

This would be the routine from now on, early starts and a company warm-up, after which we’d consult the schedule. Rehearsals took place in various spaces around the Manor, so while the Nurse and Juliet were with Ivor in the orangery, the Capulet and Montague gangs would be with Alina in the orchard, prowling like panthers, lunging like cobras. The end of each session was marked by the ringing of a giant triangle hanging from a tree. No other indication of time was permitted – no watches, no phones for those who had them, in this case Alex and Miles, the sixth-formers. In ‘free periods’ when not required to rehearse, we were asked to go and find Helen and her production team in the stables, to help build scenery, dye costumes or work on publicity.

Next Friday afternoon, the whole company would come together on the Great Lawn for a workshop on the making and wearing of masks. There seemed no way that this could turn out well, and the prospect hovered over me throughout the week, like an appointment for some dental procedure. In the meantime …

‘Montagues, Capulets, please – choose your weapons!’

In the orchard, we were invited to pull items from a tub of broom handles and bamboo canes. ‘Try out your weapon,’ said Alina, with a Jedi’s solemnity, ‘see how each of them feels in your hand. Let your weapon choose you. I want you to keep it in sight at all times, whether you’re here or at home – wherever you are. I want you to carve it with your initials, keep it by your bed at night, decorate the handle if you wish. I want you to give it a name!’ I looked at the sawn-off broom handle in my hand and searched the orchard for someone to laugh with. But there was Lucy testing the weight of her stick and Colin balancing his on the tip on his finger. Alex was testing the imaginary edge of his bamboo pole with his thumb, while Miles seemed to be whispering to the mop handle. Even George, usually watchful and reserved, was gleefully whipping a long, narrow bough of hazel back and forth, trying to make the air hiss and whistle.

And there was no denying that there was something satisfying about strutting around with a sword, even one made out of an old broom, the same primal pleasure I felt raising Harper’s air-rifle to my shoulder or playing with his dad’s sharpened axe or flicking a penknife into the trunk of a tree. Better yet, we were each given a broad leather belt to be worn low on the hip like gunslingers. The idea, said Alina, was that carrying a weapon changed the way you walked and stood and sat and held yourself, and though a great deal of the morning was spent tripping over the thing, I finally gave myself up to it, posturing with my hand on the imaginary hilt while waiting for a cup of squash and a biscuit. Maybe if I wound it round with thick rope, I thought, and glued it for a better grip, or shaved a little off the blade and rounded the other end, varnished it perhaps and this is how they get to you, the cult. This is how they wear you down …