Nick
Nick
Eight hours before
‘Don’t shit where you eat,’ his mate Rick from school had said after he got dumped by a girl in their class. ‘I should have known that she was going to bin me. And now I have to share a Bunsen burner with her every bloody week!’
As soothsayers go, he wouldn’t have had Rick down as a likely candidate. But it turns out, Rick had a lesson worth learning and Nick should have listened.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, as he stands awkwardly in Anna’s bedroom, shifting his weight from foot to foot. ‘I think… we should… we should just be friends.’
He can hardly bear to look at her, but he screws up some courage from somewhere and glances up. Her face falls.
‘Oh. Right,’ she says. Her chin juts out ever so slightly, the hurt taking the shine from her eyes.
He can’t stand it.
‘It’s just… I don’t think we should get tied down. I don’t want to limit your options. It’s only our first year, and we live together and… we have our whole lives ahead of us… and...’
‘And you want to explore things with Beth instead, is that it?’
She sounds angrier now, and he’s glad of it. Far easier to deal with anger than misery.
He’s impressed she’s shot a bullseye straight away. How do women do that? How are they so fucking perceptive all the time?
‘I’m not blind, Nick,’ she says, as though reading his thoughts.
‘I don’t…’ He runs his hands through his hair. He feels sick. ‘I’m really sorry, Anna. I just… I want to be fair. To everyone. We all have to live together. I want to make sure I’m being honest…’
He looks up at her again, sees the glint of something in her eye that he doesn’t like. Disgust.
It reminds him of the way his mum looks whenever she talks about his non-existent father. Nick has never had a relationship with him, but perhaps he inherited some of his dad’s less desirable traits all the same.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he says, again. ‘I never meant… I never wanted to hurt you.’
At least she’s not crying.
She folds her arms across her chest and takes a deep breath.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says, quietly. ‘Like you said, we have our whole lives ahead of us.’
She waves a hand at him, as though she can’t bear to be in his presence a second longer.
‘I have to get to a lecture,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to be late.’
‘Right,’ he replies. ‘Of course. I’m sorry… sorry again.’
He scuttles back to his room as quickly as possible, feeling wretched. But he had to do it. He knew for certain that it was the right thing to do.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t be feeling this way about Beth.
He takes a deep breath. The worst is behind him now. He hopes. And the thought of a future with Beth… Well, he mustn’t get ahead of himself.
She mentioned something about a play she was performing in this week.
Not an actual play. A rehearsed reading of a play, whatever that was.
The Master Builder.
Odd title, but he remembered it, because they’d had a chat about it. About how uninspiring he thought it sounded.
She told him it was one of the most complicated and discussed works by a famous Norwegian playwright, and he marvelled at the thought that there was all this knowledge she had, that he did not. He wanted to have it too.
It was like she was a being from another universe.
He opens the lid of his laptop and waits for it to connect to the painfully slow student internet. Then he searches the university website, to find out where the performance is being held.
Bingo.
Tonight, 8 p.m., in the university’s main hall.
He will go and watch her. And he’ll show her how much he cares.
*
He’s always been bright. At least when it comes to figures and graphs and all-things-scientific.
But sitting here, in this dusty hall, trying to follow the group of students reading out lines from a play clearly written a very long time ago, while they sit in a circle on the stage wearing their normal clothes… sitting here, watching this, he feels utterly thick .
He’s trying to follow the plot, but his mind keeps drifting: from the peculiar smell in the hall – not damp exactly but the scent of many people over many years having inhabited the space – to the fact that none of the actors are really acting , just reading a script aloud, to the way that the leading man keeps looking across at Beth in the most unsubtle way possible.
Nick’s fairly sure, from the little he understands of the script, that his character is meant to be looking at Beth’s. But he can also tell that it’s not just the character that’s looking at her.
Beth hasn’t spotted Nick yet. Which is lucky, because there aren’t that many people here – twenty at most. He tucked himself right at the back, behind a group of serious-faced onlookers, and kept his head low. He also wore a beanie, to control his somewhat uncontrollable hair. He didn’t want to distract her.
The play ends and the small assembly of people clap, in a peculiarly muted way that reassures him they were as baffled as he was. A guy with a beard and glasses gets up and stands in the centre of the small stage, and thanks everyone for coming, and thanks the cast – ‘especially our Halvard, read by Justin; our Hilda, read by Beth; and our Aline, read by Meredith’ – and everyone gives another sorry round of applause. He looks up at Beth and he realises her cheeks are pink and that she’s happy.
His mouth rearranges itself into a smile and he claps louder.
‘Now, I think after that, it’s time for the pub. Yes?’ the bearded guy says.
‘Yes!’ The small cast on stage reply as one.
The audience stand and mingle and he lingers for a few minutes. He doesn’t want to spoil her evening. He just wants her to know that he came. So he watches her, as she accepts compliments and back-slaps from various people, and then when she turns to pick up the coffee cup that was sitting next to her chair throughout the performance, he takes a few steps forward.
Finally, she turns and sees him.
‘Oh,’ she says.
He can’t entirely read her expression.
‘Hi,’ he replies.
‘Nick. Are you… is there an event happening here now or something?’
‘What? No!’ He frowns. ‘No, I came to see you. To watch the rehearsed reading. You were…’
He pauses. He doesn’t want to sound trite.
‘You were really magnificent. It was like watching a hundred different personalities all in one. All coming from you.’
He’s not quite sure that came across the way he intended.
‘A hundred?’ she says, but she’s amused.
‘I don’t know.’ He feels a bit stupid again. ‘I just mean… you really transported me. Into their strange, fucked up world. It was like Beth was gone, and Hilda had taken her place. I almost didn’t recognise you. It was… powerful.’
She smiles shyly and he feels relieved. Thank God. He’s said the right thing.
‘I had no idea you were watching,’ she says. ‘If I had, you might have put me off.’
‘That’s why I came in disguise.’ He pulls off his beanie, setting his hair free, and she smiles again. This time, her eyes light up with it.
He feels that familiar feeling in his stomach, as though he’s just left it behind at the top of a rollercoaster. He’s overcome with the urge to hold her close, to tell her that if she’d only trust him, he’d make her so unbelievably happy.
But he can’t do anything, because Halvard, the leading man, has sidled up behind her and is staring at him.
‘Hey,’ he says, and Nick holds his stare. ‘Are you a theatre student too?’
‘Hi Justin,’ she says, turning to him. ‘No, this is Nick, my flatmate. He’s a cultural wasteland.’
She looks back, checking in that it’s OK, that he’s not offended by her dig. He shakes his head and laughs.
‘Oh really. Your first Ibsen I take it?’ Justin says, and Nick wants to punch him squarely in the face.
‘Guilty,’ he says instead. He lifts his hands, palm-out, to his shoulders. ‘What’s Ibsen again?’
‘The playwright!’ Beth laughs.
‘What did you think?’
‘I thought Beth was magnificent,’ he says, purposefully.
Justin lifts one side of his mouth.
‘I quite agree.’ He turns to Beth, literally giving Nick a cold shoulder. ‘Anyway, time for the pub, Hilda?’
Nick’s fist itches.
‘Oh,’ she says, and Nick hates that this twat has put her in this situation. Has deliberately made her choose between them – deliberately made her feel uncomfortable in some peacocking show of masculinity. ‘I… do you fancy it Nick? Joining us at the pub?’
He blinks.
He wants to say: no, I fancy you, and I want to take you out to dinner somewhere posh but not so posh that you feel uncomfortable and I want you to explain this play to me so that I can wrap my thick head around it all and what it means to you to be performing like this and I want to show you that I’m genuinely interested in you and it’s not just because you’re beautiful, but because you’re brilliant and I know you could teach me so much and that we could share so many adventures…
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say any of that.
‘Oh, no, you go celebrate with the cast. I’ll catch up with you later at the Asylum. I think I need to take some time to digest my first rehearsed reading anyway.’
Is it wishful thinking, or does her face fall ever so slightly?
‘OK, sure,’ she says. Justin smirks again behind her, before ambling over to someone else. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘You will.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ she says, eventually. Something passes over her face; something he can’t interpret. ‘It…’
But she doesn’t finish her sentence.
‘It was a pleasure,’ he says, and he means it.