Sweet Sorrow(53)

‘The worshipped sun peered forth the golden— I can’t do this.’

‘Yes, you can!’

‘I feel silly!’

She scrambled up to lean against the tree.

‘But you understand it!’

‘I’m not stupid.’

‘I didn’t say you—’

‘He means before dawn.’

‘Exactly!’

‘So why can’t I say “before dawn”? Two words. Before dawn.’

‘Because this is what’s written and it’s better! Picture it – sun’s little face peeking out the window …’

‘Fine, you say it then,’ I said, and tossed the script into the long grass.

‘But they’re not my lines,’ she said, retrieving the script. ‘They’re yours.’

‘Only ’til Friday.’

‘Rubbish. Come on. Who’s he talking to in the scene?’

I took the script back. ‘Lady Montague.’

‘Exactly, the boss’s wife, and all of a sudden he’s changing the way he speaks and maybe it’s because—’

‘He’s trying to impress her.’

‘Or maybe he’s scared of her or he fancies her.’

‘Which is it?’

‘I don’t know! That’s up to you.’

So I tried to impress Fran. If I couldn’t do it with talent or intelligence, then I’d be constant and persevere and my reward would be to walk home with her each day.

I continued my policy of pelting her with questions, and soon I knew about her best friends at school: Sophie (hilarious, should meet), Jen (cool, I’d probably fancy her) and Neil (tells him everything, just friends). I knew her favourite music, which was either very old – her mum’s LPs, Nick Drake and Patti Smith, Nina Simone and the Velvet Underground and obscure old disco – or so new that I’d not heard of it. She’d been listening a lot to the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack, not because of the film, which she ‘liked but didn’t love’, but because of the Radiohead track at the end, and I had what I thought of as the Radiohead reflex – a rounding of the shoulders, a concerned knitting of the brow. Her favourite movies, too, were what I thought of as ‘university films’ by Jarmusch and Almodóvar, beautiful youths in large-framed spectacles, smoking in Tokyo or Paris, Madrid or the East Village. She had a favourite colour Kieslowski film. Her taste in books was heavily influenced by the GCSE English syllabus, and she loved T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen and the Bront?s. She liked Thomas Hardy too, but thought of him more as a poet than a novelist, to which I could only nod because I only knew him as a street name, and so thought of him more as an Avenue than a Crescent.

In short, she was as pretentious as to be expected at sixteen and I rearranged my own tastes accordingly, shuffling The Piano up above Total Recall, Thai green curry over deep-fried prawn balls, while the things she hated – Schwarzenegger, serial-killer movies, Tarantino – were quietly stowed out of sight. In all her cultural passions, her parents – her mother in particular – loomed large, and I found this strange because weren’t we meant to form our personalities and passions in opposition to the older generation? I’d resisted jazz on principle, and countered with guitar music, great slabs of rudimentary and predictable chords in thumping 4/4 time, devoid of syncopation, modulation and improvisation. It was a puerile and predictable form of rebellion but if ever I came close to liking any of Dad’s music, it seemed important to keep it to myself. I wanted my discoveries to be my own, even if I secretly knew they were no good.

But perhaps this was one of the markers of the upbringing that had produced Fran. The Fishers weren’t wealthy, but they knew things, they went on holiday so that they could walk great distances, had wine with meals and used fresh herbs, went to the theatre, and all of this weird, secret knowledge would be passed down along with the good furniture and expensive kitchenware. I wasn’t intimidated, or I resolved not to be but, apart from jazz, I didn’t have the same legacy to draw upon, and so listened instead until I knew her favourite places (Lisbon, Snowdonia, New York) and the places she’d like to go (Cambodia, Berlin), her musical accomplishments (Grade 5 piano, Grade 3 viola, thinking of giving up because ‘Who’s ever going to say, “Fran, play us something on your viola”?’) and the band that she and her friends played in together, called either Savage Alice or Goths in Summer, depending on how seriously they were taking themselves. ‘We’ve played the Chatsborne Summer Fête so it looks like things are going to take off for us soon.’

‘Well, if you’re playing the fêtes …’

‘Next year it’ll be school fêtes all over the region.’

‘What kind of music?’

‘We specialise in covers that no one recognises. I shout out, “Here’s one you all know! Help us out with the chorus!” and everyone sort of looks at each other and shrugs.’

I loved those walks home, our pace slowing as the days went by. I retained a sense that I was being taught – quietly instructed on what was cool – but I didn’t mind. Music, books, films, even art, seemed to have a concentrated power at that age. Like a new friendship, they might change your life and when I had time – I would have time – then I would let some new things in. Over the days, the conversation became easier, so that every now and then I’d let a question slip through.