Chapter One #2
me like an insect splayed, will she? Fie upon it—I’ll to horse, and
leave the whore, and choose my own girl from a world of flesh, or
better still a boy, a hot-blood soldier...
“Laurie?”
Laurie
snapped upright. Behind him in the mirror was a chair, and in the
chair, pale and tousled, clearly just startled out of
sleep...
Sasha.
Laurie turned. Sasha got up, rubbing his eyes, and came to meet
him. He was wearing one of his nice business suits, collar open,
tie discarded long ago. The clothes became him with such Romani
dash even at the end of a long hard day that Laurie’s eyes stung
with longing for him. His throat dried. Sasha was water to him,
cool clear water. Sanity, life and strength. Laurie walked into his
arms. “Oh, thank God.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Bloody Bertram.” Laurie groaned, rested his brow on Sasha’s
shoulder. “Bastard won’t get out of my head.”
Sasha
stroked his hair, feeling fevered dampness in the rich dark silk.
He’d seen this before, and he knew what to do. All the world said
his Laurie was a better actor for the total immersion he brought to
his roles, but Sasha remembered the boy who had jumped like a
weasel from part to part, and bounced up painlessly afterwards,
nobody but himself. “Bugger Bertram,” he said softly, kissing
Laurie’s ear, making him snort with laughter. “Does Bertram know
where we live?”
“Nope. Never told him.”
“Does he know where we get our Sunday-night takeaway treat when
you’ve finished a run? Or what trendily kitsch 1970s film you’ll
watch on Netflix afterwards?”
“No. Golden Voyage of Sinbad
tonight, please. Martin Shaw in sailor pants and a
shirt open so far he could’ve caught fish in it.”
Sasha
chuckled. His command of English was better than Laurie’s, but he
knew how it amused his lover when the Romanian boy reached for a
dirty colloquial phrase. “Mm. I’d have a piece of that action.” He
rolled his hips against Laurie’s, half erotic, half pure comedy,
and Laurie looked up, eyes glowing. “There you go, sweet prince,”
Sasha whispered in approval, sealing the spell with a thumb pressed
to Laurie’s lower lip. “Where’s that bastard Bertram
now?”
“Gone.”
“I can still hear ten thousand people yelling for him in the
pit. Shouldn’t you be taking curtain call?”
“I was, but... Never mind me. What are you doing
here?”
“I was called in for a ’terp job. Only just got away, and I
thought I’d try and meet you here. Bill let me in at the stage
door, and... Well. I fell asleep.”
Laurie
grinned. Sasha now worked brutally long hours with the Immigration
Guidance Council, advising and interpreting for new arrivals. He
could be forgiven for dropping off anywhere, but that was no reason
not to tease him. “I see. My triumphal last performance, and you
slept through it like a baby.”
“Oh, God. Should I have come, ves’tacha? I’d have made time,
if...”
Laurie silenced him with a kiss. Ves’tacha—Sasha’s name for
him from their earliest shared days. It meant beloved, although Laurie hadn’t found
that out until weeks later. What had Sasha said to him, out there
on freezing Birchwood Heath, their pulses still racing from orgasm,
frost-glimmered ferns cutting the night sky above their heads?
Ves’tacha. Beloved. It didn’t take me long
to know.
“Of course you didn’t have to come,” Laurie said softly. “I
told you, didn’t I? Your work’s way more important than my nonsense
here, always.” He brightened. “Hell, though, we did well tonight,
didn’t we? I can hear them too, now—my ten million
fans.”
“I do believe I said ten thousand. Couldn’t you hear them
before?”
“Bertram couldn’t.” Laurie seized Sasha before his brow could
furrow in concern. “I can hear them. I can hear waltz music. Dance
with me!”
Sasha kept up with him as best he could. He’d learned to dance
by Romani campfires. Laurie had learned in stage classes, picking
up a little of everything from tap to break to ballroom, but
somehow when they hit the floor together in clubs and at their
friends’ weddings, they made a good pair. He let Laurie whirl him
round—leading, of course—through the maze of costume rails and prop
dummies. He lost his stride and just hung on, laughing, the lights
turning to comet trails around him. He loved how Laurie said
we when the going was
good, his long-established shorthand for Sasha’s contribution to
the rise of the Fitzroy star—the steady job, the daily affection
steadier still. We did
well, as if Sasha had been there on the
stage at his side, helping him through his all-consuming
transformations. “Go take your bow,” Sasha gasped, crashing him
gently into a wall of fur-lined cloaks. “They won’t wait
forever.”
“All right.” Laurie let him go, then suddenly grasped both his
hands. “I tell you what. Come with me! Stand out there and see what
it’s like, just one time. We can pass you off as a courtier or
something.”
“Laurie, it’s not panto. And I don’t... I’m not about to
be passed off as
anything.”
It was
lightly said, breathless laughter still touching Sasha’s voice. But
something in the words jarred them both, and they stood still,
staring at one another. Laurie was the first to break free of the
moment. “Okay,” he whispered, and pressed to Sasha’s lips a
promise, a velvet-hot kiss. “But come up and meet me after, all
right? And then we’ll go home.”
***
The All’s Well director was hovering in the wings on Laurie’s return,
performing a small, twitchy jig unbecoming to his years and status.
“Fucking hell,
Fitzroy,” he whispered, beckoning frenetically. “What was that?
Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait?”
“No, sir,” Laurie said sincerely. He couldn’t think what had
gotten into him, unless it had been Bertram, who did not care a
toss about etiquette to the audience and fellow actors. “Not at
all. I’m very sorry.”
“I’ve sent the support leads out twice. I was about to have the
damn Clown go out and do back-flips.”
Laurie
repressed a grin. It might not be panto, but sometimes it was very
like it. “I really am sorry, Kenneth.”
“Well, never mind.” Kenneth gestured at the soldiers, commoners
and royalty milling around among the backdrops. “Gather, gather!
His fucking Majesty Lord Count Bertram bloody Fitzroy finally
deigned to join us. Move out!”
Laurie
allowed himself to be swept along. Gem Lloyd had hooked an arm
through his and was dancing at his side. Parolles, no respecter of
young male actors’ persons, was hustling him from the rear. Kenneth
strode in their midst like an excited heron. “Swear to God,
children, I ought to be knighted for that dumb-show wedding. Froze
’em to their seats every time!”
Gem
nodded vigorously. “Better for Laurie, too. Every bugger in the
play’s got better lines than Bertram. Let him do his stuff in total
silence, though... They were terrified.”
“So were you, from the look of things.” Kenneth lined his cast
up behind the great dark curtain. “That was a nice bit of business,
flinching away from him. Why’d you keep that for last night, you
damned minx?”
“It wasn’t actually
on purpose.” Gem increased her grip on Laurie’s
arm, tipped up to him a daisy face turned to flamboyant orchid by
her paint. There was a touch of uncertainty in her smile. “You
didn’t see how he looked at me.”
Laurie
couldn’t remember. He loved Gem. He disengaged his arm, put it
round her waist and hugged her. “Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Well, you really put the shits up me.” The curtain rose, and
with that line she smiled sweetly and sailed out to take her call,
her unwilling husband in tow. Neither could resist a little
last-night vaudeville shtick, and the audience roared as Bertram
dragged his feet and gestured pathetically to Parolles for help.
Then Laurie, suddenly serious as a soldier hearing his commander’s
voice, took her gently by the hand and conducted her front and
centre for their bow.
What did
it mean to him—this moment on the shore of fame’s ocean, washed
time and time again with sound and the reflected glow of stage
lights from a thousand faces? It had used to mean simply that he
had done well—pleased them, and he had therefore done his job,
could pay his rent, treat Sash to a posh dinner. A time had come
when it had meant a social worker’s visit, and—at last, after a
year of paperwork—permission for his little sister Clara to live
with him during her school terms. It had meant food, a home,
security.
And now
it meant more. Christ, they were getting to their feet—the front
rows first, then like a contagion of excitement the rest of the
pit, then the circle, and even those precipitously perched in the
gods. The languorous groups in the boxes, rising too, plump
bejewelled hands thudding together with a sound like doves’
wings... Laurie’s skin prickled. His eyes stung with tears. Gem let
go of his hand and gave him a little shove, ceding their shared
place to him. He glanced at her in protest but she was smiling, her
kohl-rimmed gaze wistful, as if she’d suffered some painless,
profound inner defeat. Laurie stepped forward and bowed deeply to
his audience—hailed by a thousand voices, utterly alone.