Lucky Break (4 page)

‘We're so lucky,' Hettie was saying, when Nell slid the dented metal tray of drinks on to the table, ‘to have all this to work from. Honestly. I don't know where I'd start otherwise.'

‘We are lucky.' Pierre winced at the first bitter taste of beer. ‘My back story has given me so many insights into Moritz's character, and each time I rehearse, just having my Objective – I know I was bitching about Babette today – but really, it's like having a coat to keep you warm.' His eyes went misty. ‘A magic cloak of confidence. To think some people just wander on to the stage, without any idea where they're going.'

‘Yes.' Hettie was excited. ‘You know in that skipping scene, with the other girls, well, I'm actually meant to be visiting my Grandma, and then I get distracted, but all the time . . .' Her face was flushed, and her voice rose in pitch. ‘I'm feeling guilty, I'm actually thinking, shit, Grandma's waiting for me. And of course none of that is in the script.'

‘Yes,' Nell agreed. ‘That's brilliant.'

‘And if Thea is Close,' Pierre added, ‘then you've got her rhythm for nothing. Her Shadow Moves are punching, slashing, floating, gliding, pressing, wringing, dabbing, flicking.'

‘My God.' Hettie tore open a packet of crisps. ‘Yes. I can work out every single one of her lines. Well,' she laughed, ‘not that there are that many.'

‘Whereas Moritz,' Pierre squeezed his hand in for a crisp, ‘is Adrift, and the Shadow Moves for Adrift are punching, pressing, floating, flicking, wringing, slashing, gliding and dabbing.'

‘Bloody hell! Does Silvio know what a genius you are at his work?' Nell asked. She didn't know how he'd memorised the lists, especially when so many of them were the same.

‘I'm not sure, but I thought I'd better make an effort. In the third year we have to create whole characters from his Six Tables.'

Hettie looked alarmed.

Pierre sighed. ‘I think I'll do my Mum, everything she says sounds as if she's wringing out a sheet.' He began to twist an imaginary piece of cotton, his face contorting with the effort. ‘For Christ's sake son,' his voice was strained, ‘when are you going to get a proper job and stop messing around?'

‘You're a genius.'

‘Yeah. Well. I thought I'd better start making plans. I mean, what are they going to do? The ones who haven't bothered really listening? I guess they'll be out on their arses, doing walk-on parts in Panto, if they're lucky.' He drained his glass. ‘Actually, I feel sorry for my mate at Guildhall, not learning what we know. All they teach them there is tits and teeth. Maybe we should try and explain some of Silvio's theories.'

‘I'm not sure.' Nell felt doubtful. ‘What if we get it wrong?' She imagined attempting to reproduce Silvio's work, the intricate multi-coloured charts, the graphs and tables, the three-dimensional drawing of a cube with abbreviated directions for the angles of your thoughts.

‘True.' Pierre tore open another packet of crisps. ‘Maybe we're not ready yet. Anyway, you still haven't guessed the identity of my beloved.'

‘It's me.' Hettie licked her salty lips.

‘Warm.' He put an arm around her narrow shoulders and laid his head against her fine, pale hair. ‘If you were a boy, you'd be perfect.'

‘I wonder if we'll ever all work together?' Nell watched them. ‘I mean in the future. When we get out.'

‘It will be odd to be on stage with people not from Drama Arts,' Pierre said. ‘I guess we'll stand out. Or they will. Our training will put us on a whole other level.'

Yes, Nell thought. She took a last sip of her whisky mac and felt entirely happy. There would be actors, acting, and then
them
, inhabiting their actual characters, an entire psychological life, both physical and mental, all mapped out. ‘It's going to be so strange. Maybe we should set up our own company. The three of us!'

A shadow loomed over their table. They all looked up. It was the man from the bar, the man in the overcoat and paisley scarf. ‘You lot,' he gave a little rueful smile, ‘you know something . . .' He leant further down towards them and dropped his voice. ‘You're full of shit.'

Nell felt herself flush. Beside her, Pierre's mouth fell open, but he didn't say a word. The man raised his eyebrows, in derision, in warning, and pulling on his roll-up, he pushed his way out through the swing doors of the pub.

None of them spoke. There seemed nothing to say. What a horrible, bitter, cynical man, Nell thought. But she felt dirty, as if she'd been caught doing something obscene.

‘He's probably a failed actor,' Pierre rallied.

‘Yeah.' Hettie looked pale. ‘Maybe he trained at the Guildhall.'

Nell laughed, but she felt unnerved, right in the pit of her stomach where up until a minute before the whisky had been.

‘He's in the second year,' Pierre said eventually.

‘Who?'

‘My discovery. Look out for him. Gabriel. He's going to be a major star.'

‘Really?' Nell glanced up at the clock. She was ready to go home, but the thought of the note, propped as it was most evenings against her door, inviting her upstairs for a nightcap and a chat, dissuaded her.

‘Don't forget, you heard it here first. The Angel Gabriel. Gabriel Grant.'

‘OK.' Nell had never even noticed a Gabriel. ‘If you say so, then I'm sure you're right.'

The door swung open and a horde of students burst in, Dan and Jemma at the head of them, Charlie just behind.

‘Make room for the others.' Pierre and Hettie shifted along the bench away from her, and Nell lost sight of them in the crush.

The Rehearsal

Charlie Adedayo-Martin was the most beautiful girl in their year. There were other girls, some more obvious, more perfect – the French girl, Marvella, with her sultry, bee-stung mouth, Jemma with her tangle of blonde curls – but Charlie had glamour. She was tall and angular, with toffee-coloured skin and peroxide hair cropped short against her head. There was a rumour she was the daughter of an Abyssinian princess but Nell had discovered she was in fact the child of a legal secretary from Cheltenham and the Nigerian businessman she'd married.

‘That bastard, Rob.' Charlie's dark eyes welled up with tears. ‘He's in love with someone else.'

‘No!' Nell took her hand and led her out on to the blustery steps of the college, where Charlie told her in gulping tones of outrage that she'd been flicking through her boyfriend's diary when she'd found a poem – a love poem – in several tortured drafts.

‘No!' Nell said again, although what she really wanted to ask was whether Rob wrote poems often, and if he'd ever written one for her. But under the circumstances she knew these questions would sound heartless. ‘The bastard,' she said instead, ‘how could he?' And she put her arms around Charlie and breathed in the cool, flowery smell of her skin.

‘He's moving out. He's borrowing a car this weekend and taking his things.' Her nose grew red and her eyes, already swollen, spilt over with new tears. ‘I'll be living on my own.'

Nell looked away. It gave her an unexpected flash of pleasure to see that even Charlie, the enviable Charlie, could look unattractive when crying. When Nell cried her whole face puffed up, her neck turned blotchy, her ears grew red, and she'd do whatever it took to hide herself. Unless, of course, she was acting, when her tears, unreal, were made of lighter stuff and would trickle, just one or two, down the side of her face. This wasn't always what was wanted. ‘You're a milkmaid,' Patrick had bawled. ‘Not a Lady. Get a hanky out. Let's see some snot!' Nell had blushed deep red, right down to her cleavage, which was shown to great effect in yet another square-cut bodice trimmed with white. Among the many beauties in their year Nell felt small and plump as a pony, and so far, six months into the course, she'd been given nothing but wenches, children and servants to play, although once when she'd complained, she'd been cast as someone's aged mother.

‘Nell?' Charlie had hold of her arm. ‘Listen, I've got an idea. Why don't
you
move in?'

‘Me?'

‘Please! It will be fun. You can move in on Sunday, right after Rob takes his things. Or before. Or anytime. You can have the spare room.'

Nell bit her lip. She'd have to give notice where she was. Although not much, and at Charlie's she wouldn't have to endure those late-night talks outside the bathroom with her landlord, always inexplicably wandering round the house in his open dressing gown whatever time she came home.

‘OK,' she said. ‘I will. I'll do it. The week after next.'

‘Thank you.' Charlie wiped the tears from her face and Nell watched as with one small smile her beauty was restored.

 

Charlie lived on the top floor of a house in Willesden. From the outside the house looked unexceptional, the window frames peeling a little more than most, the glass in one panel of the front door boarded up, but once you were inside, the full scale of the dereliction hit you. Damp, decay, and a deep heady stench of rotting wood. Charlie ignored it. She kicked shut the front door, swept up the two flights, past the abandoned flats on each landing and on to her own floor, where the radio was playing low, the battered sofa was draped in creamy shrouds of cotton, and bunches of dried flowers stood on low tables among scattered photographs and abandoned mugs and the occasional beautiful object – a blue glass bottle or a carving of a Nigerian god.

Nell had visited several times. Had gone back with Charlie after college to go over lines, had sat on the foam comfort of the armchair, encased in its white throw, with the gas fire blasting and Charlie, even in midwinter, slouching in a pair of combat trousers, her bare feet tucked under her, her smooth brown arms and prominent shoulder bones shown off to their best advantage in a boy's school vest. Until now she'd never really noticed the spare room – had only seen the room Charlie shared with Rob – its low white bed, always unmade, the layers of antique lace at the windows, the clothes – flea-market dresses and a dun-coloured trench coat, hanging from pegs on the wall. But today Charlie continued up the stairs to a small room in the attic. It had a window that looked out to one side with a view over the garden, and a gas fire built into the chimney breast, cracked across the middle. There was a bed and a cupboard and the raised pattern of the wallpaper just visible through a coat of magnolia paint.

Nell dropped her bag and sat down on the edge of the bed. Charlie crouched on the floor and lit a match and the fire fluttered and flickered and attempted to catch. ‘Are you sure it's safe?' Nell asked, remembering vaguely some warning of her mother's about the dangers of gas, but Charlie blew on it a little to spread the flame and said she'd slept in here often after rows with Rob and she always left the fire on all night.

‘Bastard. Bastard.' She crawled across the bed and lay stretched out. ‘Thank God he's gone. You wouldn't believe what a wanker he was. You know, he was so vain? He was obsessed with his ears. Said they stuck out too much. He was always holding them back and asking what I thought.'

Nell pictured Rob and laughed. She'd met him three or four times but he never remembered her. He was one of those men who only noticed women who were beautiful. ‘Fuckable' is what he'd probably have said. ‘Now you mention it I did notice his ears,' Nell said, revenging herself. ‘Has he considered surgery? You could offer to re-set them yourself,' and they lay on the bed, laughing up at the ceiling, their fingers entwined.

‘So . . .' Nell added after a while, ‘what now? You're free and single. It's been two long weeks. Anyone you've got your eye on?'

Charlie sighed and rolled towards her. The flames from the fire threw shadows over her still face and then suddenly she was crying. Her face creased up, her fists against her eyes as if to stop the tears. ‘Bastard,' she said. ‘How could he? I thought we were so in . . .' She choked and flicked the tears angrily away, while Nell watched her, intrigued, thinking all the time, if I was a man I'd never leave her. What's the point of anything if men leave girls as beautiful as that?

‘He's an idiot,' Nell said gently. ‘He'll regret it, that's for sure.' And impulsively she put her arms round her friend and kissed her cheek. Charlie, sniffing, pushed herself against her. Her face, still damp, nuzzled into Nell's neck, her shoulder pressed hard against her breasts, and they lay like that, breathing shallowly, until the room was almost dark. Eventually they got up and moved into the kitchen, where wordlessly Charlie set a pan of water on to boil.

‘Can I do anything?' Nell looked around.

‘No, no.' Charlie was chopping an onion. ‘This is your welcome dinner, go and sit down.'

Nell went into the sitting room and waited, listening to the radio, which spun out drifty, catchy tunes, interspersed with a murmur of chatter, too low to catch. The fire was on in here too, hissing soporifically, and Nell sat down in the soft foam of the swathed white armchair and closed her eyes.

After twenty minutes or so Charlie came in with two plates of rice. The rice had been fried with slices of bacon and green pepper and a few scratchy sprigs of parsley. She put the plates on the floor and came back with a bottle of white wine and two glasses.