Chapter Six #2
here now, endangering this part you didn’t help me get.”
“I’m protecting your interests.” His expression altered, lost
its usual bluff mask. “Believe it or not, that’s what I’ve always
tried to do. You’re starting to fly pretty high, Laurie—maybe
higher than someone like me has a right to expect— but you didn’t
get there on your own. Are you forgetting that?”
“Not for one second do I forget the people who’ve really helped
me.”
“Ouch. Okay.” Arnie tried to smile, a ghastly effort which put
sweat on his brow. “That hurt. But that’s okay, isn’t it? I’ve
never minded the odd jab from you. I’m tough. Surely we can work
something out.”
“Sure. You can go back thirty years or so and work out what
turned you into someone who winces when I kiss my boyfriend. Until
then, I’d be grateful if you’d just leave me alone.”
Arnie
took a couple of backward steps. He bumped into the end of a row of
seats, turned round and stumbled away.
Sir
Ralf, who had stood clear for this exchange, watched his departure
with some interest. “That was probably very satisfying, wasn’t
it?”
Laurie
was trembling. He hid the reaction carefully, driving it deep under
his skin. “I suppose so,” he said, then followed Arnold’s clumsy
progress down the aisle and added firmly, “Yes. Yes, it
was.”
“Well, take it from an old man who’s worked his way through
many satisfactions and their opposite—sometimes the most
satisfactory things turn out not to be the best.”
Laurie
turned to him, surprised. He’d been defending Sir Ralf’s world—or
so he’d thought—against the intrusion of Arnie’s. Against
commercialism, pushy modern management that didn’t respect the
dignities of London’s ancient theatrical establishment... “I don’t
understand.”
“Never mind. Come along, you young chameleon—you’re here to
show me Romeo, not the famous Fitzroy temper. Hop onto that stage
and pick up your cue from Benvolio. My
mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the
stars...”
***
Romeo
looked around old man Capulet’s sumptuous ballroom. He was
restless, nervy, in that stage of infatuated youth where the heart
knows just enough to feel its lack. He did love fair Rosaline—of
course he did, and would forever and ever—but what was that ache,
that hollow pain inside his ribs? As if he were ripe for something,
ready, and had no idea of how to bring himself to
fruit...
Hothouse fruit. Another forced,
overwrought performance by the hothoused darling of the West
End... Romeo knew that was bollocks, but
maybe Fitzroy had better be careful. Perhaps he should work a bit
more on technique and not just let his lines and situation sweep
him away.
Perhaps
he should think.
His ears
popped, and he was just Laurie, mid-stage in a vast, bare
auditorium. Not a prop or a backdrop to aid him, because although
Sir Ralf insisted on his theatre locale from the very beginning, he
didn't want his actors to lean on externals. He wanted them to
create the scenes around them, spinning them out of their own
essential selves.
That was
what Laurie did best. He blinked in confusion. Around him were
Capulet hangers-on and servants, watching him curiously. Waiting.
Fitzroy, the stage phenomenon who could transform not only himself
but a whole cast and crew around him into a cohesive unit, make
them forget their unpaid rent and Equity dues and fly them all off
to Verona. Down in the pit, Sir Ralf was waiting too, sitting third
row back in the exact seat Paul Jacobs had used to occupy at the
Raynes, and suddenly Laurie wished himself back into that shabby
little theatre—into the comfort of that warm gaze—with an intensity
that took his breath away.
“I need a moment.” That was no good. That was the way
first-rehearsal virgins began their lines, before they realised the
space they had to fill with their voice. Laurie had never
understood why people struggled with projection. You just breathed,
didn't you? Breathed, let your lungs sense the periphery of your
audience, the very last person at the back of the gods, and you
spoke. Not even Second Servant, three foot away from him with a
napkin, had heard that. Laurie cleared his throat and tried again.
“Sir Ralf, I'm sorry. I need a few moments. Will you excuse
me?”
He
darted out into the wings. Everything was tubes at the Barbican,
long featureless corridors, modern and too damn clean. If he'd done
this at Rayne's End, or even at the Queen's, he'd have stumbled
immediately into a chaos of costume rails and cables. Now he was
alone, running down a bright-lit vacuum into nowhere. He shoved
open a pair of double doors and let them slam behind him. It was
dark in here, thank God. He staggered to a halt, clenching a hand
on the cold metal bar of a fire door. He pressed his other hand to
the wall. Beneath its palm, glass creaked and gave, and he snatched
his hand back before he could set off the fire alarm and complete
his absolute humiliation here.
At least
Romeo hadn't decided a mobile phone in his back pocket might not be
fitting to his part. Laurie dragged it out, clumsily hitting a
speed-dial key, but that was okay. He only had one person on that
list. He sank down against the breeze-block wall, drawing his knees
to his chest.
Sasha
picked up on the second ring. Belatedly Laurie remembered that
Sasha had meetings this morning, important ones, but still he
picked up, and still he sounded as if Laurie were the only person
in the world worth talking do. As if Laurie had called him at the
perfect place, perfect time, and nothing else mattered. “Laurie?
You all right, ves'tacha? Did you get finished with
Romeo?”
I think he's finished with me, possibly forever.
Laurie couldn't get a word out. He dropped his
brow to his knees and rocked, the phone clamped to his ear. Sasha
repeated his name a few times in increasing concern, then said
calmly, “Okay. I'll be there. I'll come.”
Laurie
found his voice. “No! God, no. You're busy.”
“Not just now. Matter of fact, I'm just down the road from you.
I had to come out to the Red Cross office. Can you meet
me?”
“No. I... I've got to stay here. Oh, Sash...”
“I'm coming. Where are you?”
No
bloody idea. Dragging together the last of his strength and
initiative, Laurie unfolded from his foetal curl and hauled back
one of the fire doors to look out. “Somewhere on Silk Street, near
the underground car park. Do you know where that is?”
“Sure I do,” Sasha said cheerfully. “The soup kitchen near
there used to be great. You just hang on.”
Laurie
took him literally. He closed a painful grip round the edge of the
fire door and hung on to it with one hand, breathing the rainy city
air and letting its soft grey whisper fill his head. He couldn't be
sure how much time had gone by but his heart had only just begun to
ease its frantic pounding when his lover appeared. Sasha, his
beautiful urban fox—so handsome and well dressed these days that
every head should have turned at the sight of him, and yet none of
the lunchtime crowd looked twice. Laurie understood this. Sasha's
life had depended for so long on his ability to blend into the
background that the gift had stayed with him. He was for Laurie's
eyes only, a bittersweet privilege born of fear.
No. One other person saw him. A figure in a grey hooded top,
flickering like the rain between one parked car and the next. Not
the new-made Sandrine Fulton returning from her acting class:
someone taller and thinner than that, spectrally thin, making
Laurie's skin creep with the sense of warped familiarity. “I
know you,” he whispered,
letting go of the door. He had to get to Sasha—shield him, warn
him... But there was no need. Sasha had silently crossed the space
between them and was holding out his arms. One step more and Laurie
was caught, held fast. “Sweetheart,” Sasha said against his ear.
“What the hell is it? You look like you just met your own
ghost.”
I feel like I met yours. That was it,
finally, that sense of recognition. “Sash, do you have any
brothers?”
Sasha
pushed him back through the fire doors. The cyclists locking up
their bikes at the kerbside stand were starting to look. “Dozens,
probably.”
“What?”
“Old Stefan wasn't known for self-restraint. I don't think he
put it about while my mother was with him, but... she wasn't. Not
for very long. Now, I'll stand here and talk to you about family
history for as long as you like, but I don't think that's why
you're offstage during rehearsal time.” And shivering like a scared cat, Sasha wanted to add, but instead kept silent and stroked him
like one, a hand across his cheekbone and into the hair at the back
of his neck, a firm calming hold on his scruff. “What
happened?”
“Romeo. That is.... he didn't
happen. I tried, but I was just me. I can't make
the shift. I can't change.”
“You're not a werewolf. You're a hardworking actor, and a total
pro. The last time you missed a rehearsal was when you thought your
sister had been kidnapped by terrorists.”
Laurie stared at him. There was work involved, wasn't there? It
had been easy for him for so long that he'd forgotten. But
inspiration was sometimes the result of sheer graft, in the same
way that a sixth sense could be described as a hypernormal
functioning of the other five. You learned your part and your
stagecraft, and it all reached critical mass and you took off.
“Yes. Sorry. I’m being an amateur here.”
“You've had other things on your mind. Do you know your
lines?”
“Yes, of course. Or...” Laurie paused, for the first time
analysing the difference. “It feels like they know
me. That's weird, isn't
it?”
“Very. Useful, though. It's what you do.”
Laurie
felt better now, the chilly panic receding. He became aware of the
ugly breezeblock space around them, and Sasha's beauty by contrast,
glowing with light from a different source than the neon strip
above them. “I wish I could focus,” he said involuntarily. Yes,