Lucky Break (11 page)

They walked to the other end of the town where they found the campsite, and after several false starts they set up their tent and, more than three days after leaving London, they crawled inside, and with small shivers of laughter still rippling through their bodies, they held each other and slept.

They stayed in Torri del Benaco for a week, the days lulling by, swimming, reading, playing cards, walking along the strip of restaurants, gazing in, deciding which one might be cheap enough to eat their evening meal in. They could have stayed there all summer, but they knew it would be cowardly – they'd set off with the idea of seeing as much as possible of Europe, and so reluctantly they packed up, and took the train to Venice, where they were directed to a campsite in a low-lying swamp where that first night Jemma was so badly bitten by mosquitoes she refused to come out of the tent.

‘Listen . . .' Dan coaxed her. ‘We're in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, no one's going to be looking at you.' But when eventually she did crawl out into the open, one eye was swollen shut and her top lip was so distorted she looked like a cartoon. ‘But then again . . .'

‘Come on,' she snapped, ‘let's get to St Marks Square, quick,' and she stamped off towards the lagoon.

Occasionally, as they sat outside cafés, or lay on their backs in the orange light of their canvas tent, Dan took out his New Penguin Shakespeare. ‘The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark', it said on the first blank page, and these words reminded him that the play was in fact the story of a man, a family, two families, a whole court unravelling, and not just a chance for him to play the lead. The first time he opened it, Jemma leant over, and with her finger ran down the list of characters. ‘Only two women,' she sniffed. ‘If they had to do Shakespeare, why couldn't they have chosen
As You Like It
, or
The Winter's Tale
?' And when Dan didn't reply, she sighed. ‘Who do you think will get Ophelia?'

‘No idea,' Dan shrugged. ‘Knowing them, they'll probably cast Kevin.'

‘And Samantha will get Lords, Attendants, Guards and followers of Laertes. If she's lucky.'

Dan was determined to get to Greece, but with the war raging in Bosnia, it was impossible to travel through Yugoslavia by train, and so they used Jemma's credit card and bought two plane tickets. ‘It's all right,' she told him, ‘I'm going to get a job, teaching English to foreign students. There's a course you can do. And anyway, when you're a big star, playing Hamlet at the RSC, you can pay me back.'

‘Sure,' he said, ‘sure,' but he felt himself grow pale under the mask of his tan.

Athens, when they finally reached it, was stifling. An almost solid weight of heat pressed down on Dan's head, and to get away from it, the next morning at dawn they joined a group of tourists in pressed, clean clothes, with sunhats and expensive cameras, and took a bus to the theatre at Epidaurus. They dozed and played cards and looked out at the scorched countryside, until Jemma scrabbled in her bag for
Teach Yourself Greek
and slid it into her walkman. Dan closed his eyes against the hiss and whirr and found himself instead listening to the woman in front read aloud from her guidebook.
The ancient sanctuary of Aeslepios at Epidaurus is a spiritual place worth travelling around the world to visit
.

But not even the guidebook could prepare him for the spectacular grandeur of the amphitheatre when they eventually arrived. It had been dug out of a hillside and its perfect terraces stretched away on three sides, the limestone seating of its steps dazzling in the sun. For a while he simply stared at it, the cicadas whistling, the turquoise sky blazing down, until, mesmerised, he walked to the centre of the circular stage. He noticed as he did so that Jemma had climbed, taking the aisle that led up to the right, ascending nimbly, heading for the promise of shade provided by a scrag of trees at the top.

‘Hello . . .' he tested out the famous acoustics, ‘can you hear me?' and he listened for the echo as his voice rose away from him. ‘Hello, hello.' He imagined himself before an audience of thousands and then, unable to resist, he coughed, glanced around and began:

 

‘To be or not to be, that is the question;

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them.'

 

He could see people looking at him, some even choosing seats. He took another breath, his chest opening, his voice powerful and low.

 

‘To die, to sleep, no more – and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to.'

 

He paused again and held the silence, cupped against his ear.

 

‘Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished.

To die, to sleep –

To sleep – perchance to dream.'

 

And then from above Jemma's voice came floating down.

 

‘ 'Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the mome wraths outgrabe.'

 

‘Come down here,' Dan shouted to her, high above him in her flowery dress. But she only shouted back.

 

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch.'

 

Later that week they boarded a ferry, arriving at the end of a long day, blistered and windswept, on the tiny island of Foligandros. No one else got off, apart from one lone man in hiking gear, who they followed from the port to where a group of small, stout women dressed in black were standing waiting for a bus. When the bus came, already full, the women surged forward, fighting, shoulder to shoulder, to get on. Dan hung back but Jemma joined them, muttering in her few new words of Greek, giving Dan no choice but to follow and receive a barrage of body blows. The bus didn't go far. It rumbled up a hill and stopped at the corner of a village square. The buildings round its edge looked closed, shuttered-up and quiet, and the women who got off the bus disappeared down side streets, into alleys, leaving them in silence. Dan walked into the centre of the square and sat down under a tree – an old, gnarled ancestor of a tree, its branches worn and shiny. ‘Whose idea was Foligandros anyway?' It was hard not to think of all the pictures of Greek islands that he'd seen, white houses, beaches, water skiers, young people dancing under the stars.

‘We don't have to stay,' Jemma said. ‘The ferry comes by again tomorrow,' and they glanced towards the only bar, where two old men, sitting outside, slammed down counters in a violent and accusing way.

Dan and Jemma walked back down to the harbour, where they set up camp in a little wood of pines. As the sun began to set, they sat on a rock above the sea and watched it sink, deep red, into the water. ‘I know this is embarrassing,' Jemma said, scrabbling around in the seams of the boulder for pebbles, ‘but I have to try something.' She stood up, and mumbling, she hurled a small stone into the sea.

‘What was that?'

‘Envy,' Jemma flushed. She found another pebble and threw it, watching while it cut into the darkening waves. ‘Bitterness.' She threw one more, already in her hand. It made a tiny satisfying plop. ‘Regret.'

‘Is that it?' Dan put his hand on the back of her knee.

‘Yes.'

‘Really?'

‘Yup. Simple as that. We can go home now.'

Dan pulled her down beside him. He wished he could pick up a whole boulder and hurl it as far as it would go. Doubt.

‘I love you,' he said, to steady himself, and Jemma snaked her cool arm around his waist and they sat in silence until the sun slipped below the surface of the water and was gone.

 

Dan sat on the steps of Drama Arts in a communal haze of smoke. They'd just been given the list of plays they would be working on for the next three terms. ‘
Hamlet
!' someone whistled, ‘bloody hell.' And Dan felt himself colour as he purposefully didn't look round.

‘I know,' he heard Jonathan cough. ‘I'm bloody shitting myself. But at least I've got till next spring before I have to show my arse.'

Dan swung round. Jonathan was leaning back, a deep purple shirt unbuttoned to his navel, a cigarette jammed between his fingers, the last vestiges of his old accountant self, dispensed with over the summer. ‘I told them no, it's too much, maybe the part should be divided up, but this is the third year, the real thing, and I guess we owe it to the public to give them a good show.' He shrugged and inhaled deeply and Dan, bile rising, threw his own cigarette on to the road.

Part Two

1995–2000

The Call

Since leaving college Nell had been on the books of a firm of solicitors whose offices were in Soho. She worked, filling in for other, more permanent clerks, sometimes a day here or there, and occasionally, if the case was quick, following it from beginning to end. The days were short, from ten to four, which meant, in theory, she was still available for auditions. Sorry, she could say, I can't get to the high court tomorrow, I'm up for a musical touring production of
Phaedra
, but in reality, with no agent, and only a photograph and the most basic information, eyes – brown, hair – brown, height – 5 feet 3½ inches, listed in the actors' directory,
Spotlight
, this rarely happened. Instead, Nell traipsed regularly into Soho to collect her wages, cash in hand, and sometimes, if she lingered, they would give her the details of a new job. A day at a magistrates' court in North London, a week at a county court in the city, and once, a trip to the Old Bailey.

For the last few weeks Nell had been on the case of sixteen South American pickpockets. It was a complicated case, made more so by the fact that each of the sixteen accused, in an attempt to dissociate themselves from their alleged accomplices, had insisted on his own counsel. That week the courtroom was full. Nell sat behind her barrister, Mr Hawley, a broad-shouldered, heavy-limbed man, his black cotton gown carelessly thrown on, as if by failing to arrange the pleats and folds of it, he could continue to look manly. He sat in a row of his friends, all whispering, scribbling, drawing cartoons, passing along jokes, occasionally glancing round to guffaw at colleagues in the seats behind. Nell ignored them. She looked straight ahead at the miserable bent heads of the South Americans who'd been waiting for this trial for nearly a year. Had they noticed that their lawyers were giggling like schoolgirls, that the clerks, or at least one of them, were entirely unqualified for the job? She'd spent the last two years lying on the floor searching for sense memories, or visiting the zoo to study zebra. And now, she thought grandly, a man's very life depends on me. The pickpockets looked oblivious. Their eyes, for the most part, were fixed on the floor, their bodies slumped forward, their heads drowsy with the wait. They were in the ninth week of their case, and they must have sensed it wasn't going well. Last week Nell had gone down into the cells with Mr Hawley and listened to their man's – Estaban's – scrambled English as he'd begged them to find someone who could write a letter to his wife. ‘So long time. No one helping. No one.' His hands, which he rubbed together, were stained and stubby. ‘You?' he'd fixed his pleading eyes on Mr Hawley, ‘you help me? Yes? Please?' And not knowing what else to do, Nell had taken notes.

Later, once they'd been locked and unlocked through a cage of double gates, checked out past a man in a booth, and free, had taken the twisting staircase two steps at a time, Nell had asked, hopefully, ‘Will he get off?'

‘Doubt it.' Mr Hawley was already striding ahead, his black gown flapping. ‘The case isn't looking good at all.'

‘But the letter . . .' she asked, anxious.

Mr Hawley waited for her to catch up. ‘All the procedures for correspondence are in place.' He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Hey,' he looked amused, and she had the sudden flashing realisation he saw himself as attractive. ‘Don't get drawn in.'

The next day there was much hilarity in the courtroom when several pairs of men's platform shoes were presented as evidence. The shoes were examined by the judge and passed along the line of jurors. ‘Now the question arises,' the prosecutor was enjoying himself, ‘do these gentlemen wear their high-heeled shoes for vanity, coming as they do from a race of, shall we say, vertically challenged peoples, or, as we are inclined to believe, to conceal stolen items of monetary value?' Shoes were held up, cavities revealed, groans and jokes flung back and forth. ‘On my soul,' a balding defence lawyer whispered, ‘I do believe I've been shoe-horned into this.'

‘It's a job for a free man,' another quipped. ‘Freeman, Hardy and Willis.'