The rest of my term was spent filling in visa application forms and discussing payment plans with the registrar and the housing office. I handed in an essay about Keats and Shelley, then headed home for the long Easter break. Thinking about the flights I’d soon have to book, I got a job at the local pub. My holiday would be spent serving IPA to sad saggy old men at 11.30 in the morning before they plodded off to their factory jobs, glasses of house red to the secretaries being bought lunch by their bosses and Smirnoff Ices to kids who might not have been eighteen but looked older than me.
For my first day off from the pub, my mum booked tickets to see Hedda Gabler in London. Early in the morning, five of us piled into her red Fiesta. Matthew and Annabelle were meant to come and we would have taken two cars, but Matthew’s back had played up in the night and they’d called off. Instead of perching happily in the back seat of their car, gossiping about the neighbours or making crude comments about the people in passing cars, I found myself sandwiched between Beatrice and Valerie, while Bob occupied the passenger seat.
We probably had lunch and maybe saw some art; it’d be safe to say Bob ordered a large glass of wine and Beatrice joined him; and perhaps we discussed what a shame it was that Matthew and Annabelle hadn’t come and whether we’d be able to give their tickets to the box office for resale. But none of that really sticks in my head. What I remember from the day is climbing the plush stairs to the dress circle and peering through the half-light at the letters on the sides of the seats, then picking my way to the centre of row B and briefly meeting the eye of a wavy-haired blonde as I lowered myself into my seat.
The play was fantastic. I sat forward in my seat as the actress languished across the stage and offered Løvborg the pistol. I caught the eye of the blonde girl next to me again in the interval. Sitting alone while the others found the loos and more wine, I merged in my mind the blonde’s curls with Hedda’s heaving bosom and felt the muscles tense pleasantly in my thighs.
After the bang from backstage, I peered through people’s shoulders as we filed down the stairs, trying not to lose the bobbing blonde head. On the street, a decision was made to turn left and I cheered silently as I noticed the denim jacket on the same girl’s back as she walked a few steps ahead of us with someone I presumed to be her grandmother. I muttered responses to the others and applauded the costumes, lighting and set, all the while thinking we must keep pace, I need to know where she’s going.
We followed them halfway down the main street, but Valerie was lagging and Beatrice was staring longingly at the wine lists in the windows of the bars we were passing. Eventually we stopped, choosing an outdoor table. Everyone was jolly and I joined in the amateur critique, feeling more excited and alive than I had for months, yet also crushingly deflated by the anticlimax of the whole event. I thought of Matthew and wished it had been just he and I in the theatre, wished he could have seen the girl and encouraged me to say hello. No, I didn’t wish he was there. I liked the purity of it as it was. The girl had been mine to watch, not in a sordid way, but in the beautiful, poetic way that Hedda takes her own life and Mrs Dalloway buys the flowers. This was my moment and, though I’d liked to have sat in that bar with Matthew describing and analysing the literary eroticism of living above the parapet, I was glad I hadn’t had to share it.
The following day, Matthew and I sat at his computer scanning a list of Fringe theatres in London. I was looking for addresses; I’d already drafted a letter.
Dear Sir/Madam
I’m an English Literature undergraduate, just coming to the end of my first year, and I would like to enquire as to whether you have any work-experience opportunities.
I’m interested in pursuing theatre, eventually as a director, and am looking to gain as much experience of the industry as possible. My summer break runs from 30th June until 1st September and I could be in London for some or all of this time.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my query. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you require any further information. I have enclosed a copy of my CV.
Yours faithfully,
Natalie Lucas
Hedda Gabler had been the first play I hadn’t fallen asleep in. I’d attended the theatre with my mum as a child, mostly with my nana, who liked to see adaptations of things like Wuthering Heights and Sons and Lovers, but even if I was enjoying the play and I cared about the characters, something about the soft seats and the darkened auditorium always lulled me into a light snooze after the interval. But having finally understood an ending by piecing the third act to the first and second rather than to the first alone, I was convinced this was the world I wanted. I longed to be in charge: to be the master of the beautiful puppet-like actors, to choose the colours and the set and to own the audience’s imagination for those brief hours. It was an industry of Uncles; it had to be.
Matthew was supportive. He said his tenants’ contract ran out at the beginning of July, so he could keep his flat in Kew empty over the summer. I could live there and he could visit me a few days every week, juggling his betting and Annabelle. We would be together and alone. We could go food shopping and spend afternoons in cafés where no one would know us. It’d be perfect.
I sent my letter to thirty theatres in London. With a little more hesitation, I also wrote an email to the secretary of Durham’s Student Theatre asking how I could get involved.
In the first week of the new term, I was assigned to stage manage a production of Michael Frayn’s Clouds. The director was a tall, friendly, ex-public-school boy, the producer a short and bubbly Literature student, and the designer a tiny, beautiful, brunette vegan. I ran around arranging poster printing and finding props, but also began following the production team to college bars after run-throughs and laughing with people my own age.
I told Matthew on the phone I’d finally found people at university with passion. Unlike the English students who partied all night and rolled out of bed for their nine-fifteens without having opened the books, here were people offering their time for free, willing to paint sets until four in the morning, then return to their bedrooms and finish writing that paper on John Donne that needed to be handed in at 10am, grab some sleep before rehearsals at noon, then do the whole crazy thing all over again. Matthew quietly replied that he was happy for me.
With a week and a half until our get-in, I received a letter from the Blue Box Theatre. I keyed it into Google and found it was right there on the District Line, just a dozen or so stops from Kew. They said they had a good internship programme and, if I could make it down to London for an informal interview, they could probably offer me six weeks in the summer. They needed a ‘deputy stage manager’ for a new play.
I told Lee, one of the actors in Clouds, first and he jumped around with me in excitement, then took me for a picnic to celebrate.
‘So, you want to be a director?’ he asked, passing me the brie.
‘I think so. What about you?’ I lay back and propped myself on my elbows, careful to avoid the duck and goose shit covering the grass.
‘I like comedy. Stand-up and stuff.’ Lee’s long legs were crossed and he was turned to me, focusing intently. ‘I mean, acting’s okay, but I get stuck with all the supporting roles here, you know – the token black guy in a white university.’
I snorted a giggle and immediately wondered whether that was inappropriate.
‘So I’d really like to be a comedian,’ he smiled.
‘Cool. How do you get into that?’ I tore some bread for something to do with my hands.
‘Just do it I guess. I’m going up to Edinburgh this year, and I’ll spend the summer at home in London trying to get some gigs at clubs and such.’ He was still smiling his half-goofy, half-sexy grin.
‘Fun.’ I smiled back.
‘Hey, you should come. You’ll be in London. We could go out.’
‘Oh.’ I looked at his chocolate eyes and wondered what exactly he meant. ‘Yeah, maybe.’ An imaginary something poked me in the stomach: Isn’t London meant to be just you and Matthew? You and Matthew living in his flat, living together, living like a normal couple who don’t have to worry what people think of them?
‘Where are you staying when you’re there?’
‘Oh, um, my uncle has a place in Kew that’s going to be empty.’
Is he flirting? Are you?
‘Cool, Kew’s really nice. You must be close to your uncle.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘We could go to the botanical gardens. Or Hampton Court. You’ll have to have a day off, right? I could show you round my city.’
‘Sure. Well, I probably won’t know my schedule until I’m down there, but maybe.’
The conversation died as we ate and later it turned to making up silly rhyming songs. As Lee made me laugh until Coca Cola came out of my nose, my muscles untensed; this was just two friends having fun, he wasn’t interested and neither was I. It was fine.