Jonah was grinning as he jogged home to Gallant House. His agent had left him a message. He had an audition for a new TV series for a streaming service, not a background character but one of the main parts. There was a hotly tipped young director who wanted to do a British version of Narcos and Jonah was up for the leader of a drug ring that was sending fifteen-year-olds out as expendable couriers to supply their clients. Once again his so-called authenticity was playing in his favour.
The news had made him think that maybe he should try out for some more villains in the autumn stage productions? He’d assumed he wasn’t up to the mark for Shakespearian roles but the academy had taught him there were some sick guys he might stand a chance of playing in the right production. Iago – he acted like a drug pusher to Othello, feeding his obsession about his wife. Probably too soon to hope for that? Don John from Much Ado About Nothing – another manipulative bastard. More likely? The Donmar Warehouse had the play on their list of forthcoming productions. He should mention it to Carol, his agent. He could feel that his star was rising and maybe, just maybe, he’d get the breaks to make this a career. A role on stage would be a great experience and really improve his CV.
Letting the front door slam, he dived straight into the shower. The fortnight shoot for his storyline had just finished and everyone was pleased with how it had worked out. Jonah had been surprised to find his character got away with his thefts. The main victim had been an old stalwart of the soap who had been considered by the producers as dead wood. He’d been given a flashy farewell as he died of an accidental overdose, thanks to Jonah’s character supplying an impure drug. The writers were kicking around the idea of having Jonah’s character up for trial next season. Again they were pumping him for real life stories but he didn’t mind if it meant more airtime.
Whistling, Jonah cleaned himself thoroughly with citrus body wash, and wrapped a towel around his waist. His dream of escaping to his own flat looked increasingly realistic.
He dressed quickly in sweatpants and a T-shirt. They’d wrapped up filming early so he had time to cook himself a meal and get down to some of his much-neglected course work. Carol was urging him to stay on the degree for as long as possible; she said it made him sound truly reformed when she told filmmakers he was now putting himself through the rigours of RADA.
Rigours of RADA? Good one, Carol. He liked being surrounded by people who knew how to use language. Maybe he’d get there one day himself. His own speech was still salted with the curses he’d learned to use in care and in prison and he knew now after reading so many plays and scripts that this emptied out the impact. Fucking this, fucking that, fucking nothing. It was more effective to hear one swear word from, say, Bridget than a string of them from him. In his defence, he thought, he would not have survived without adopting the same speech patterns as his peers. Say ‘rigours of RADA’ at either place and you’d get your face smashed in.
He looked through the contents of the fridge. Knowing he didn’t have time to shop, Bridget added his order onto hers and he settled it as part of the rent. Before it had always been easy to distinguish his things from his landlady’s as Bridget had a few staple meals she rarely strayed from, and she usually cooked vegetarian. He’d not thought to ask what the arrangement was with Jenny. He’d better go and find her before he stole her chicken pieces.
At first there was no answer when he knocked on her door. Thinking he could hear movement inside, he tapped again. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to tell him to enter.
‘Jenny, it’s just me. I just wanted to know if the chicken in the fridge yours? I was thinking of doing a stir fry.’
The door opened a crack and a hand appeared signing ‘no’.
‘Are you OK?’ He seemed to be asking her that a lot recently.
The sign repeated.
He pushed a little at the door and it swung open. Jenny’s face was tear-stained and she was bent over like an old lady.
‘Can I get you something?’
She shook her head. Then she stretched back out on the floor and let the tears run down her cheeks.
‘Your back again?’
She gave him the thumbs up.
He was getting used to entering a room and finding her stretched out on the rug. ‘Has it ever been this bad before?’
The wafting gesture suggested that it had once, but not for a long time.
‘Have you got some painkillers? It looks like you really could do with some.’
She pointed to the bathroom. He went in and found her pill dispenser. She had the strong ones – prescription opioids. He felt an echo of his old longing for them but forced it away. This was about Jenny. Today’s capsule was empty so he took two pills from tomorrow and brought them back to her with a glass of water.
‘I think it’s an emergency,’ he said when she looked doubtful.
She took the pills in one gulp.
‘You lie there and wait for those to kick in. When was the last time you ate?’ She was looking drawn, lines around her mouth and top of her nose from setting her face against the pain. ‘Want to share my stir fry?’
Wearily she nodded. He didn’t think she’d be eating much, so the chicken should feed them both. ‘OK, come down in about twenty minutes. It should be cooked by then.’
The stir fry took fifteen. He plated up the multi-coloured meal, pleased with the contrast of the red peppers against the pale bean shoots and chicken. Cooking was another thing he’d learned in prison. It was much easier doing this for two rather than hundreds. As Jenny still wasn’t down, he went out into the kitchen courtyard and snipped a little coriander in the herb bed. The vine had its roots down here in this odd corner of the garden. He patted the stem appreciatively. It was twisted like a hank of steel wool, turned around itself many times. The leaves were now the size of side plates. He remembered Bridget saying you could cook with them but he wasn’t sure how you’d do that. Eat them in a salad? He tore off a strip and tasted it. It was OK but lettuce was better. The little globes that would swell into grapes were just beginning to form.
There was a rap at the window.
Good: Jenny had made it to the kitchen. ‘Coming!’
As he turned to head inside he noticed that the lid covering the old well was open. The well wasn’t a thing of beauty, just a low stone wall that reached his knees, the shaft covered over by a hinged trapdoor. If there had been a bucket and pulley system it had long since gone. He peered inside out of habit, caught a glimpse of his head outlined against the sky, then closed the safety barrier. It was dangerous to leave it like that. An animal could fall in – or a kid if one strayed into the garden. Norman was having someone to stay, wasn’t he? He’d have to mention it to Bridget, though why she opened it in the first place he couldn’t imagine. Maybe Norman had been poking around with her as part of their historical investigations. Those two were thick as thieves at the moment. He remembered reading something about the digging of the well in one of Bridget’s chapters when she’d still been able to con him into reading that weird shit she wrote.
Back in the kitchen, he snipped the coriander over the meal and presented Jenny with her plate.
‘Thank you,’ she signed.
‘Feeling better?’
She held up finger and thumb. A little. Her eyes were haunted by the memory of the pain but she was in the floating stage of the pills that he remembered too well. He could feel the ghost of the pill on his tongue. Forget it. Not going back there.
‘Can you take some time off?’ he asked to distract himself.
And lose my place? She wrote.
‘They can’t fire you for taking sick leave.’
But what if they hire someone to fill in who’s better than me? What if they decide having a mute violinist is too much for them?
‘Then you sue them for discrimination – you could rake it in.’
He’d said it like a joke but she obviously took offence at his bald statement of this home truth. Her eyes were sparking. If she’d been a cat she would’ve scratched him. But he couldn’t be bothered with tiptoeing around the truth. A spade was a fucking spade.
He swallowed his mouthful. ‘Don’t get me wrong: you’ve got the talent as far as I can tell. But it’s worth facing up to how the world sees us.’ He poured them both some water from the jug on the table. ‘I’m an ex-con. That got me into RADA as some bleeding-heart liberal wanted to give me a chance. I expect there wasn’t a dry eye in the house after my audition and sob story. I’m sure there were a million other better candidates but I look good on the books.’ She was obviously shocked by that revelation, eyes rounded so that he could see a full ring of white around her brown irises. ‘What? No one told you? I thought you would’ve guessed when you met my probation officer.’
She shook her head. She’d stopped eating. He wasn’t having that: he nudged the hand which held her fork.
‘Don’t panic, Jenny: I’m house-trained. Anyway, usually I’m up shit creek when I go for jobs, but bizarrely in television my drug offender background gives me an edge when I’m trying out for roles in hard-hitting drama. It gives them a story for their publicity people, they can pimp me out to interviews and shit. Look at Jonah, our tame ex-con. Fucked up life, drugs and gangs, and now he’s all shiny and new. I’m not happy I lived through that crap, but I’m happy it plays well for me now. You could make your story work for you, couldn’t you?’
Jenny was still staring at him as though he’d sprouted a horn in the middle of his forehead.
‘You really didn’t know?’ He rotated his head from side to side. ‘I would’ve thought it was obvious. Got these in prison. Like them? I’m Frankenstein, see? Society’s monster. And these.’ He held out his spiderwebbed hands. ‘I’m a tarantula, hiding in corners, nasty bite. You quickly learn that it’s safer to look like the big bad wolf than the lamb in there. It’s camouflage.’ That wasn’t quite the truth. He’d learned to look mean long before, when he was in what was laughably called the ‘care’ of the local council. ‘They are all roles, just like acting. I don’t think the real me is like any of those images. The real me probably doesn’t exist and I’m just a collection of parts these days.’ He hadn’t meant to tell her that. She could think of him what she liked; it was his own opinion that mattered. ‘I think it’s why I’m so fucking good at what I do.’ And he was. He had the agent and the casting call to prove it. Today he was feeling pretty fucking proud of himself.
‘And look at you,’ he continued, anger swinging round to her, sitting there so defeated and pathetic, like his mother did, ‘you’re a shit hot violinist. Minority – disabled – ticking so many boxes for their numbers they’ll be begging you to work for them. You should be making those albums where you drape yourself naked over rocks, modesty preserved by a bit of silk or something.’ He grinned. ‘Yeah, I’ve seen those classical magazines at the newsagents even if I don’t know what the music sounds like. You can’t miss those cover girls who hug their instruments and look like they’re getting off on it.’ Her furious expression was priceless but these musical babes were such hypocrites: pretending to be so refined when really, they were selling wet dreams to rich blokes in Surrey who could buy the soft classical porn without a blush. ‘The public would go for you, big time.’
Jenny pushed her plate away.
‘Hey, don’t waste good food!’
She was tapping furiously. He read over her shoulder. Thanks for the career advice – for a career about which you know nothing. So I sell myself as a sex object and maybe people will listen to my music? Great. That’s so why I studied and practised all these years. If I can’t play while keeping my clothes on, then I’m not going to play.
Jonah held up his hands. She clearly didn’t understand his brand of teasing. ‘Sorry. I was just telling you how I see it. Sex sells for guys as well as girls. If you’ve got it, why not use it? Someone else will if you don’t. You’re streets ahead of all those buck-teethed only-their-mother-loves-them guys who make up half the orchestras I’ve seen on TV.’
I know sex sells, but I don’t sell sex, she wrote primly.
Why was he bothering? ‘Yeah, I know, you’re the good girl. Eat your food and shut the fuck up, Jonah.’