Sweet Sorrow(80)
Forty-eight hours, forty-six, forty-four. My God, imagine if I’d been banished to Mantua. How would I fill all this slow motion? I knew that this was in part a test, and I retained enough self-control to stay away from the phone or just-passing trips to her village. Instead, I succumbed to a bone-deep tiredness and an ache in my jaw and an itchy, fidgety restlessness through the long, humid nights in the bottom bunk, in part a spiritual yearning, in part a sweaty, un-poetic horniness of the kind found in army barracks. ‘Agony’: the word seemed to be thrown around a great deal in descriptions of parted lovers but it certainly applied to the hours spent staring at the petrol station forecourt through the Saturday-night shift, my lover’s paranoia relieved only by lurid and explicit memories of the things we’d done in the bus shelters and hedgerows on the way home. Forty-two hours, thirty-six, twenty-four; I might not have come up with the words, but I couldn’t help thinking Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds …
On Sunday, in a regrettable fit of soulfulness, I thought that I might draw her from memory. Until now, most of the eyes I’d drawn had dangled from the sockets of skulls, and my attempts at her face, though not a bad likeness, had a generalised, conventional glamour that I knew Fran would have rejected, the eyes too large and wet, the lips too full. Be true, I told myself, but my attempts at sensuality resulted in the kind of home-made erotica that prison inmates pay for with cigarettes. The best attempt was a version of how she had looked somersaulting underwater, her toes pointed, the oily black nightdress floating up around her hips and clinging to her breasts. I could really go to town with the black in this one, was particularly proud of the rendition of her hardened nipple, viewed in profile, a single black mark with my Rotring 0.4mm.
Four hours, three, two, one and there she was at nine on Monday, pushing her bicycle for the first time. Some transformation seemed to have taken place, because she seemed even lovelier than I’d remembered – did a girl’s face change once you’d kissed her? – and I was very taken with the way she let her bike, a beautiful old thin-framed racer, fall on top of mine in a way that I found fantastically provocative.
‘Hey there,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ she said, and smiled.
We’d agreed to be cool with each other, but somehow word had spread, even before we could begin rehearsals.
‘Nice weekend, you two?’ said Lucy.
‘Hello, lovebirds,’ said Keith.
‘Well, Benvolio, you’re a dark horse,’ said Miles, pinching the flesh above my collar-bone as we made our way to the orangery.
‘Well, I think it’s lovely, two young people getting together,’ said Polly. ‘There’s one every season.’
Even Ivor and Alina seemed to know. ‘I think we should probably keep you two apart!’ said Ivor with a bumptious wink, as we were divided into pairs for the Capulet ball, the first scene to involve the entire company.
Alina’s concept was to begin with a traditional courtly dance, hands on hips and white handkerchiefs held aloft, then become increasingly crazed and wild and modern as the scene went on before the whole company froze, holding their pose at the point where Romeo and Juliet finally see each other. Apart from the Macarena and the hokey-cokey, I’d never followed choreography and now the concept of left and right, forward and back seemed far harder as I wondered, did ‘hello’ mean ‘it’s over’? Might ‘Let’s talk later’ mean ‘let’s never talk again’? At one point in the formal dance, I had to take her hand for a moment and I wondered, what should I read into the interlaced fingers, the circular motion of her thumb in the palm of my hand? I found her palm with my own thumb and rubbed back frantically in a way that I hoped was erotic. ‘Wait for me later,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Yes?’
At lunch, I walked with George. ‘So I hear congratulations are in order,’ he said.
‘Christ, George, how does everyone know this stuff?’
‘Word gets around. People say they do plays for the ideas and the art, but it’s all about the sex. The last-night party, it’s basically an orgy. That’s the hope anyway.’
‘Well, it’s nothing yet. It’s probably a, just … you know …’
‘A mere summer’s fancy.’
‘I was going to say “snog”. It’s just a snog at a party. We’ll see.’
‘Well, just so you know, I don’t mind. Well, I do mind, but I’m not going to get weird about it and follow you both home. I’m … happy for you.’
‘Thanks, George.’
‘Furious too.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘But don’t say anything, will you? To her, about me. I do have some pride.’
I said that I understood.
We worked hard – no time for lunchtime meetings now – and at last, at the end of the long day, we found each other at the spot where the bikes lay on top of each other, pedals in spokes, brake cables around handlebars. ‘Look, we’re all tangled up,’ she said and I thought, well, this is just too much.
‘I thought we could go somewhere, me and you. Run our lines,’ I said, and we began to push our bikes, but now Helen and Alex were running towards us.
‘The gang’s all here!’ said Helen.
‘How are you two feeling?’ said Alex. ‘Any comedown, any crash?’