Arriving at the Blue Box, I was greeted by a frenzy. The producer squealed that she was glad I was here because the stage manager was sick and rehearsals were already running behind. She put me on book and assigned me the jobs of making prop lists, reporting script problems and noting down the blocking – a task that, I was informed, would be somewhat thwarted by Raoul’s ‘organic’ way of directing plays. I nodded, took the offered pencil and clipboard and sat in a plastic chair trying to translate my instructions into English.
Returning to Matthew’s cosy Kew flat after my first day, I lay in his arms and told him I already loved it. We had made up, once again with me apologising until my tongue was numb and submitting to his will in the bedroom while his eyes hardened and he told me he would teach me a lesson. Also, I’d emailed Nadiyya and she’d agreed to visit us both in Richmond when she was back in the country to hand in her dissertation. Matthew was content. I was nervous.
I immediately loved living in Kew, though. Matthew showed me a pretty route back from the station, pointing out the enormous houses celebrities supposedly owned. His flat was on a picturesque, tree-lined street. It had a gravelled parking space, treasured in London, and an imposing white front door. The curved hall, where every day I hoped not to bump into real residents because I wasn’t sure who knew Matthew as Albert and who didn’t, led to the less impressive door to the flat. Panicking a little, I’d fumble at waist height for the keys and finally fall into the narrow entrance, coat rack to my left, cramped bathroom ahead. The toilet didn’t flush too well and when Matthew and I fought that summer, he’d call me a ‘constipated bitch’. The shower was functional but not pleasant; I didn’t look forward to languid latherings so much as hurried hops in and out before wrapping myself in a scratchy towel and passing quickly into the main room to seek warmth in my clothes.
The main room was why the flat was lovely. If I turned right from the front door I faced an enormous bay window. As a ground floor flat, all I could see was the car, the pavement and the town-houses opposite, but the net curtains maintained our privacy and the flood of daylight from that much glass made the place feel larger than it was. To my right would be a narrow staircase that led to a fairly decent sized kitchen, half sunk underground, its ceiling jutting into the main room with a good two feet of wooden banisters that spewed natural light onto our scrambled eggs and fruit bowl. We didn’t cook much that summer; the flat contained only the basic equipment landlords provide for tenants and, anyway, Matthew enjoyed uncomplicated meals. We ate ham and eggs, mashed potatoes and banana sandwiches; salads were simple, served in breakfast bowls and offered only with a jar of Colman’s Mustard. There was a door from the kitchen so small that even I had to duck; through it, bare stone walls lined a narrow passage and cracked paving slabs offered stepping stones. Around the spooky corner, where one bulb glowed a faint yellow, lay a washing machine and cleaning equipment, including an ancient vacuum cleaner. I tried to avoid this room. I did my washing only twice and, each time, propped the door open in case it automatically locked and I became trapped down there where no one could hear me scream. I’d heap the damp bundle in my arms and hurry back to the light, up the stairs to drape it in the main room, remembering again that this was what I liked about the place, what I liked about the intimacy of living with Matthew. Beneath the bay window sat a small dining table with just two chairs. They were not comfy, but it was a nice place to read or to boot up my laptop. There was no other furniture; it wasn’t our place. We sometimes talked about how we would decorate it if we were to stay, musing that one day – once I was done with university and we no longer had to worry about parents and wives – we could move here.
If I stood before the window and turned to face the room, I could view the whole flat. I could see three deep steps in front of me, framed by long white banisters. The tops of the banisters continuing from the kitchen below formed a railing around the bedroom above. Taking the steps in one leap, I would be in the left corner of the room, which was raised above the rest and held the queen-sized bed, a mahogany wardrobe and a mostly bare bookshelf. Flopping on the sheets, Matthew would join me and we’d stare at the ceiling, speaking of how wonderful it was to be alone.
‘You know what to do, right? It’s hardly rocket-science!’ The American twang in my ear projected the girl’s boredom and superiority to the task at hand with crystal clarity, despite its thickness betraying her blocked nose and evident illness.
I hadn’t met Becky yet, but I’d heard a few (not especially favourable) reports from the actors and now tried to picture the bolshy international student on the other end of the phone. I assured her I had it under control, staying quiet about the fact that while Becky herself might find writing rehearsal reports tedious unskilled labour, I – having never written one before – was petrified.
When we finally met, it was in a whirl at the beginning of a rehearsal the following week. Becky breezed into the rehearsal room wearing torn jeans and a bandana around her hair. She dumped her backpack on the floor and sank into a plastic chair, her long legs spread either side of the bag as she unzipped it and removed the props she’d collected over the weekend. When I entered, the gangly girl looked up vaguely and mumbled a hello as she went back to the task at hand. Once she was done, she explained in an authoritative tone that almost masked her Philly accent what each prop was for and that she hoped I was able to manage because she had to help paint the set and wouldn’t be in rehearsals for the rest of the week. ‘Okay?’ she concluded, impatient to be off.
‘Okay,’ I replied, wondering whether I’d be able to get on with this gruff girl for the weeks ahead.
By opening night, I had my answer. The only backstage crew who had to be at every rehearsal and performance, Becky and I developed a ritual of racing each other silently down the stairs after the play. One of us ordered two Coronas while the other claimed a pair of stools in the corner of the bar. In silence, we poked lime slices into our bottles and raised them to a perhaps immature, but nevertheless satisfying toast of ‘FUCK’.
Then we collapsed in giggles and proceeded to gossip into the night. Becky was studying performing arts in London and filling every waking hour with theatre, bar work, art classes and lovers. Over the next few weeks we became friends, often talking cynically about the latest diva-esque actions of the actors. The eldest and more widely known of the two was a rather large, flamboyant man in his seventies. He never tired of telling us of the old days, name-dropping directors and stars to remind us what a step down this play was for him. One night, he even turned up with a break-a-leg card from Paul McCartney and handed it around while applying his face. Far from star-struck, Becky would cruelly imitate the old man and mock-vomit at the fact she’d seen him in just underpants in the dressing room.
Press night happened to be my nineteenth birthday. My mum came up to see the show, bringing along my brother and a couple of friends. I was excited and a little nervous for them to see it, but the cast and crew were all in a good mood. Raoul had made a few last-minute changes to the technical running of the show and I was frantically going over my notes in the little tech booth. The house was filling up and I knew the audience contained representatives from Time Out, The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph.
As I brought down the house music with the lights, switched to the new show CD and set my levels for the next cue, the play began. On the first scene change, I hit play and pressed the light cue. The music blared out much louder than I’d expected and, panicking, I tried to subtly bring it down. The same happened with the next cue and the next. Checking and rechecking my notes and the soundboard, I could find nothing wrong and decided it must sound different in the house and perhaps I was just paranoid.
However, I watched one of the actors flinch as I gave the next sound cue and a second later a scrawled piece of paper was shoved through my window: ‘SOUND LEVELS WAY TOO LOUD! DO SOMETHING!’
I panicked. I checked everything again and saw it was all as we’d set it during the technical run and as I’d executed it in the previews. Muttering uncertainly to myself, I cautiously turned the main volume down three notches. For the next cues I would just have to guess. But at the end of the play, there was what was supposed to be a nuclear explosion, which involved me frantically pressing five buttons at once, fading bombs out and repeating, all to cues in the script. If I guessed wrong for that, the heart-pounding bombs and shatters would either be laughably quiet or so loud they’d cause permanent damage to the audience’s hearing.
Perspiring, I cued up for the final scene. The first bomb went off and the audience jumped. Good. But now the actor had lost his flow and was jumbling up his lines. I had to improvise with my cues and looked up at one point from my frenzied button-pushing and knob-twisting to see I’d left him bathed in light. I swore and willed him to hurry up and get this disastrous night over with.
After the show, Raoul came up to ask what had gone wrong.
‘I’ve no idea; I did everything as we’d agreed. The only difference was the new CD.’
‘Shit, we didn’t do a sound check to make sure the levels were the same as the old CD.’ Raoul slapped his hand to his head.
‘Oh God, was that it?’ I asked, half relieved that it wasn’t something I’d done, half pissed that I’d been made to sweat for someone else’s mistake.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry, totally my fault.’
The actor wasn’t so forgiving. He glared at me as I tried to say sorry for the lights at the end.
‘Just get it right tomorrow,’ he boomed and turned away.
Becky shoved a glass of champagne into my hand and, after we’d cleared the house, we descended to the bar. I introduced Becky to my family and, offering me more champagne, they all told me to forget about the tech and enjoy my birthday. Hungry, I asked at the bar if they had a food menu but all they could offer was a bag of crisps.
After an hour or so, my family said they had to drive back and bought me another drink as a final congratulation before heading off. Becky sat with me and asked if I was all right. Still a little upset but thoroughly inebriated, I said I was fine and continued chatting to the bar owner and theatre manager. They left me to buy more drinks and, sat on my own, I finally started to feel queasy. Closing my eyes, I realised I was going to be sick. I lunged towards the unisex bathrooms, colliding with Raoul on my way to the porcelain bowl. Becky followed me in and held my hair back as I hurled into the toilet, muttering apologies.
It was a while before we emerged and, upon everyone clapping at my re-entrance into the bar, I dashed for the sink and threw up again. Becky said she’d take me home. She pleaded with a bored-looking bus driver to let me on and I sat at the front with her shirt held tightly to my mouth.
I don’t remember much else, but was informed the next day that Becky and her boyfriend had had to carry me up the stairs to her flat. I woke in my clothes and walked towards the bathroom holding my head. On the way I passed Becky’s bedroom; the door was ajar and I glimpsed the naked back of Becky’s boyfriend protruding from the covers, with her just visible beyond him. The sight upset me and, with my hangover pounding in my ears, I ran a shower and sat for a long time trying to erase the image of Becky in the arms of a guy.
Said guy later made me brunch and I thanked him profusely for looking after me the previous night, before returning to Kew to prepare for the evening’s performance. It was a week before the bar staff let me forget that night, but Becky was sympathetic, only teasing me now and again.
She and I continued to have our post-show ‘FUCK’ and our conversations began to take a more intimate turn. Becky was by far the least bashful and, night after night, she made me hiccup with laughter as she related the gory details of her busy sex-life. While she was currently living with the Irish boyfriend I’d met, she had always had trouble with monogamy and seemed to constantly find herself in compromising situations with professors, strangers in bars, workmates and, currently, Raoul.
‘I just need it, you know?’
In return, I told Becky modified versions of my own relationship history, painting Nadiyya as the tragically doomed love of my life and referring only vaguely to Matthew.
Becky’s reckless love-life became a bit of a joke and, by the closing night of the show, two days before her twenty-first birthday, I was thoroughly entertained by my friend’s disastrous relations with men. That night, a girl Matthew had been encouraging me to chat to on Gaydar had unexpectedly turned up at the play and asked for me after the show.
A little annoyed, I went down to talk to her. She bought me a drink and I nodded as she told me about her interests in theatre, but I kept glancing at the other end of the bar, where Becky and Raoul were doing shots and falling into each other’s laps. With the bar staff giving me occasional funny looks, I grew more and more embarrassed by the sordid situation. At the first opportune moment, I excused myself and sent Becky a text from the bathroom saying: ‘HELP ME!’
Five minutes later, Becky rushed up from the other end of the bar exclaiming, ‘Nat, Nat, Raoul has just told me we need to start the get out tonight. It can’t wait until the morning, we have to do it now!’ Turning to the girl, she added, ‘I’m sorry, another team’s meant to do it tomorrow but something’s gone wrong, it’s going to take at least a couple of hours!’ Before I could even shoot the girl an apologetic look, Becky clutched my wrist and dragged me out of the bar and up the stairs to the theatre, where we both collapsed in giggles.
‘You’re my hero,’ I panted.
Three hours later, the bartenders had fed Becky multiple doubles, Raoul had tried to kiss her and I’d missed the last train back to Kew. Sat in a circle, the whole crew and various friends of Becky’s swayed to the pop-music on the radio and hooted at only half-funny jokes. I perched on the arm of Raoul’s chair and we both watched a boy of around nineteen try to chat Becky up.
‘Shall I put him off?’ Raoul asked.
‘How?’ I slurred.
‘I’ll kiss him,’ he replied.
‘You wouldn’t!’
With that, he walked up to the boy and said, ‘I’ve been looking at you all night and I just had to do this.’ He took the boy’s face in his hands and aimed his puckered lips at his mouth. The kid shrieked and ran back to the bar. Simultaneously, I grabbed Becky from her seat and took her to a different table.
Almost falling off the stool I’d planted her on, Becky looked at me and said, ‘Everyone here knows I like you. Why haven’t you kissed me?’
Digesting her spidery lashes, I swallowed.
After a long silence, I murmured, ‘I should go. My last bus is in ten minutes.’
‘Stay with me,’ Becky purred.
I thought of Matthew waiting for me in Kew. Becky followed me outside, but I could say nothing except ‘Sorry.’ She shrugged and allowed me to walk away, shouting after me: ‘Why don’t you come to Philly for New Year’s Eve?’
I looked over my shoulder and smiled, ‘Okay.’
I missed the last bus, got stuck in Putney for an hour and fought with Matthew when I finally made it home, but Becky sent me an email saying she’d been serious, I should visit during my winter break.
With the play finished and my flight only a week away, I began to feel guilty about not seeing my family. Matthew and I decided to leave Kew at the end of the week. We would have to clean the flat ready for the new tenants, tidy baby oil, handcuffs and vibrators from the bookshelf next to the bed, and pack away the cards and Scrabble set permanently littering the fold-out dining table in the absence of a TV. My clothes would have to cease hanging beside his in the wardrobe, and our toothbrushes would need to be parted and returned to larger, cleaner, more luxurious bathrooms. Matthew would drive us both as far as Tunbridge Wells, where I would lug my suitcase onto a train and call my mum to pick me up from Battle an hour or so after Matthew pulled his Saab up to his house.
But before any of that could happen, I was to meet Nadiyya as she stumbled from the District Line.
‘Baby!’ She kissed me on the mouth and wrapped her arms on top of mine. ‘Where is Albert?’
‘He’s at the flat.’ I tried to smile away my nerves.
‘I’ve missed you soooooo much.’ She kissed me again as we walked. ‘Hugh sends his love.’
‘Oh, cool.’
‘So, are you excited about tonight?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ I swallowed. ‘We thought we’d get Chinese. Is that okay with you?’
We walked through lanes, past the tiny cemetery and up to the grand, converted building that had begun to seem like home.
‘Hello?’ I whispered into the gloom as I let us in. The curtains were drawn, which was not unusual for us during the day, but now struck me as shamefully seedy.
‘Well, hello.’ Matthew emerged from the one room, smiling and holding out his hand to Nadiyya. He was wearing his favourite dusty pink shirt and a pair of pale trousers. I saw his silver hair and the lines creasing his face, his yellowing teeth and his sagging earlobes. I noticed his old-man shoes and smelled his too-powerful Jovan Musk. I didn’t dare look at Nadiyya, but wondered in horror what she was making of this bizarre situation. I felt a sick churning in my stomach, realising what a mistake it was to mix my worlds. Nadiyya, though a girl and part of something beautiful and unattainable I’d dreamt of in the sixth form, belonged to my student reality; she knew the nineteen-year-old, nightclubbing, beer-drinking Nat, not the ageless romantic Uncle who could sit with a sixty-three-year-old and cry passionate tears about his inevitable death. This is a crazy mistake, I thought.
But Nadiyya swallowed her surprise if she had any and launched into her characteristic ‘baby’s and ‘darling’s, telling Matthew she’d heard ‘sooooo’ much about him and touching both our arms as she spoke.
Our nerves quietened as we opened a bottle of wine and played some Aimee Mann. We sat around the table eating chow mein and kung pao with forks. Nadiyya asked excitedly about Rosella and quizzed Matthew on how he would cope with my absence. By the time we led and followed each other up the three stairs to the bed, Matthew and I were feeling sentimental and panicked. One of us set up a video camera on the bookshelf while the other two began kissing. I’d read that, in the majority of threesomes, the man gets left out, but as I thought more about leaving for America, I ached to be closer to Matthew.
The next morning Nadiyya gushed that she’d had a good time, but once alone Matthew and I giggled that she hadn’t really got a look in. It had been a success I suppose: Matthew and I were closer than ever and I was sure we would make the long-distance thing work.
While Matthew finished vacuuming the flat and packing up the car, I walked Nadiyya to the station and lingered for a final stroll around Kew. My head full of love and Uncles, I dawdled through the streets, filling my stomach with bittersweet notions about the months to come. Passing an empty-looking tattoo parlour, an impulse rose through me like a fever.
Half an hour later, I skipped back up the hill with a small black ankh inked to my hip. Wriggling in the passenger’s seat of Matthew’s car, I grinned and peeled away the cling-film dressing to show my lover what I’d done.
‘Wow,’ he released the hand-brake and turned to the road with a smile. ‘You really are mine.’