Lucky Break (29 page)

Jemma looked at him, affronted, as if this was the first time. Dan ignored her, easing the door shut as the tip of Honey's hairstyle drooped over and spiked her in the eye. ‘I won't be long,' he called, over a prolonged wail of agony, and guiltily, he ran down the stairs.

It's not as if I can do anything to help, he shrugged as he slunk away. Honey had taken against him recently, and unless Jemma was actually out of the house, she wouldn't even allow him to read her a story. ‘Mummy read it!' her lip would quiver if he even suggested such a thing, and she'd rush to Jemma, and curl like a cat around her legs.

‘Hey. Sweetheart. I'm really good at telling stories, that's my job.' He'd crouch down, but his daughter only narrowed her grey eyes at him. ‘Mummy does Made Up stories, and she sings.' She looked triumphant, half hidden by her matted curls.

‘Does she now?' Dan tried to smile.

‘It's because you were away so much last year,' Jemma attempted to console him, embarrassed, but also, he was sure of it, gratified by so much adoration. ‘Kids are like animals, they want what's familiar.' But even Jemma became exasperated when Honey wouldn't let Dan fetch her a glass of water, and then when he tried to ease the pushchair from Jemma's hands as they struggled up Kite Hill, Honey whipped round as if she'd been stung. ‘NO!' she yelled, ‘Mummy push. Mummy's the boss, not you!'

Dan felt himself flush. ‘I am the boss.'

‘No.' Honey's eyes were blazing. ‘Mummy's the King. And you. You're not even the Queen.'

‘I am the Queen.' He spat back at her. ‘I
am
the Queen!' and then noticing several passers-by slowing to stare, he muttered something, unintelligible even to himself, and abandoned the pushchair to Jemma.

‘Maybe I should go away for a few days,' Jemma said, tearful, and Dan, although he knew it was childish, walked on ahead.

‘Or maybe I should.'

 

Dan sat in the Duke's Head and read through the scenes. He wiped the froth of lager from his mouth and turned away from the other, mostly solitary men so that they wouldn't see his lips moving as he whispered the words.

‘How you doing then, mate?' It was Sid, a regular Dan knew from his own regular visits. ‘Fancy a refill?'

Dan looked at his empty glass. ‘I shouldn't really, but . . . Go on then. A pint of Fosters. Cheers.' He put down the sheaf of papers and waited for Sid to return.

 

It was after ten by the time he got home. ‘Sorry!' He opened the door too vigorously and let it slam into the wall. ‘Sorry.' He imagined a leather whip slicing across his back. Jemma was sitting at the computer, frowning at the screen. She raised her head as if to speak, and then looked down again.

Dan leant over her. ‘Hello, my darling.' He recognised the title of that term's essay and the Cyrillic script of the text. ‘I bumped into Sid. We talked about the play . . . you know he was Napoleon once in a platform performance at Stratford?'

Jemma kept on typing. ‘If only you could get a job in St Petersburg or Moscow, then I could do my year abroad, and finish this degree. Imagine, with a Russian degree I might be employed by an oligarch, or put in charge of a multinational business.'

‘Sure,' Dan watched her fingers, mesmerised as the mysterious letters bloomed, ‘but what happens if I get some glamorous job filming on a beach in the Maldives, or even jetting off to Broadway? You wouldn't be able to come with me – you'd have to report to your boss at the Grozni Deli and beg for a long weekend.'

‘True,' Jemma sighed, and she shut down the screen.

 

They had to sit close together in order to read. Dan put the gas fire on and pulled the lamp a little closer so it cast its golden glow over the sofa. They read the first marked scene. Josephine was confiding in him – her lover – that she found the physical presence of Napoleon repulsive. ‘
He is so attentive I can hardly breathe, and now I must lie with him each day and night so that when he returns from Italy I am certain to be carrying his child.
'

‘
But Madame, surely it is worth a little discomfort. When you think of the benefits, for yourself, and your deserving courtiers.'
Dan felt his tongue loosened, his voice smooth as sauce.
‘A soldier will fight long and hard for a length of coloured ribbon. Is that not so?'

‘That I wouldn't know. And you. What would keep you fighting?'

‘I might need more than a promise of ribbon.'

‘A promise of what, then?'

‘Ahh . . . But first answer me this. Did you give your word to be faithful during the long months of the campaign?'

‘The best way to keep one's word,'
Josephine was quick to respond,
‘is never to give it.'

‘It's good.' Jemma nodded solemnly.

‘And you,' Dan told her. ‘You're good.' She'd always been a skilful sight reader, and tonight she read with ease and grace. ‘Is Honey asleep?' He stood up and adjusted the curtains.

‘Of course. What are you doing?'

‘Nothing.' Dan stretched out on the floor before the fire. ‘I'm cold, that's all.'

‘
But surely the danger is too great, for me to take my pleasure elsewhere
,' Jemma continued. ‘
And then, without pleasure, soon I shall shrivel up and fade away.
'

‘You know,' Dan looked up at her, ‘there was an eighteenth-century theory that blondes were inherently more modest and respectable than any other species of girl, which is why Josephine, a brunette, was so very popular. But,' he began to crawl towards her, ‘I know otherwise.'

‘Hey,' she said, ‘I thought you were in a hurry to read through the rest of the scenes?'

‘The audition's not till next week.'

‘True.'

‘So plenty of time for getting it right.'

‘I see.' She bent her head to the play. ‘But think, how much fun would it be to go to New York? To have an adventure?'

Dan took hold of her free hand and ran his thumb across the palm. ‘Aren't we having an adventure here?' Jemma placed the page before his eyes. He looked at it for a moment, and then easing the sheaf of papers from her hand, he flung it to the far side of the room. ‘Dan!' she gasped. ‘What are you doing?' But she didn't resist when he pulled her down with him on to the floor.

Jemma's skin was softer than any woman he'd met. She'd put on weight since Honey, a fact she railed against, although, as far as he could see, without making any visible effort to lose it. Dan said nothing, in part because her conviction she looked monstrous seemed unshakeable, but mostly because he liked the way she was now. Curving roundly at the hips, her shirt straining, her clothes hiding secrets waiting to unfold. Jemma's shirt was half unbuttoned and he slid it down over her shoulders. Her arms were pale as a painting, her breasts high. ‘So Madame,' he grinned. ‘What do they say about your modesty now?'

‘It's not my modesty that's in question,' she was laughing, ‘it's my choice in men,' and giving in, she bent her neck and kissed him.

 

That Sunday they went to Jemma's friend, Mel's, for lunch. It was Mel's birthday and the kitchen was full of family and friends. They'd met Mel and her husband Tim at a series of classes for expectant parents when Jemma was pregnant with Honey, and Dan had felt bound to them, and also vaguely repelled, when Jemma told him how Tim had taken it upon himself to partner her and Mel alternately at the ‘positions for labour' class that, due to filming, he'd been forced to miss.

‘Oh come on,' Jemma coaxed him when he voiced reluctance. ‘It's only round the corner. We don't have to stay long, and there'll be other kids for Honey.'

Jemma and Dan helped themselves to food and stood in the window talking to Mel's sister, who worked as a midwife. Mel's sister was telling them about a new phenomenon – patients who were so obese that an extra pair of hands was needed – usually hers – to hold up the flab during a Caesarean section while the surgeon rooted around to find the womb. ‘I'm on call again at six tomorrow morning. Flab holder. What kind of a job is that?'

‘We'll think of you,' Jemma was attempting to press a spoon of couscous into Honey's averted mouth, but Dan found himself staring at the cheerful, worn face of the midwife. ‘But doesn't it make you feel good? I mean, to know that you're doing something worthwhile?'

The woman put her head on one side.

‘At least you're not dressing up in tights and a codpiece,' Dan continued, ‘or having a cast of your head taken, not for medical science, but in order to perfect your likeness to an alien.'

The midwife laughed. ‘But you're making people happy.'

‘But not intensely, life-changingly, like you.'

‘I don't know.' She paused. ‘Think of those people who go to
Les Misérables
once a week. Or whose lives revolve around
EastEnders
? But there are times . . .' she conceded, ‘when it is a miracle. Actually, I cried the other day for the first time in years. This birth was just so beautiful. But I promise you, it's often easy to forget.'

‘So what are you saying?' Jemma took Dan's arm. ‘You're thinking of re-training as a midwife?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Dan!' Tim was upon them with a bottle of beer. ‘What are you up to at the moment, anything exciting?'

‘Well,' he began, and unable to resist Tim's expectant face he told him about New York.

 

On the morning of the audition Jemma and Dan read through the scenes. They stood in the kitchen among the mess of breakfast, while Dan tried to imagine himself drinking champagne in Josephine's private salon. He read quietly, casually, throwing away the lines in what he hoped was an offhand, gallant manner. ‘Do you want to run through them again?' Jemma asked, anxious, betraying the fact the words had come out flat and lifeless, but he shook his head. ‘No time.'

‘All right, then.' She followed him into the hall and watched as he pulled on his coat. ‘Take care.'

Dan laughed. It wasn't as if he was setting out into the snow to trap a wild beast to kill and skin for supper. ‘OK,' he shook off a last embrace. ‘I'll see you later.' But as he walked towards the Tube he felt unpleasantly nervous. Lenny had told him he was the second actor on the list and as the train sped south he allowed himself to say the other men's names, accepting finally he had no power over whose fortune rose and fell. Not even, of course, his own. Greg Hawes was in first. Dan could imagine him pulling it off, although he wasn't as right for the part as, say, Declan McCloud, who was going in after him. If it came to it, Declan was his real competition, he'd lost two jobs to him in the past year. He tried to focus on exactly what it was Declan had that he didn't possess, apart from ridiculously white teeth, and then, without warning, nerves overwhelmed him. His throat tightened and his stomach grew loose, and shakily he stood up and fought his way off the train. No job for a grown-up; he breathed shallowly, but his eyes felt gritty, and his face was numb. He ran up the escalator and breathed in the cold, welcome city air, and checking his watch, he set off through side streets, dodging the people, avoiding the busy roads, running past the marooned stone lions of Trafalgar Square.

Everywhere he looked he saw signs of hopelessness. A man asleep in a cardboard tunnel, another, shivering beside his dog. There but for the grace of God go I, he muttered, as he bought a copy of
The Big Issue
from a man with no official permit, and pulling his jacket round him he pushed on, telling himself he had no time for this, not now. Instead he searched his mind for something to hold on to. Honey. His angel child, with her curls and deep grey eyes. Honey. But he couldn't shake off the image of her growling at him from the royal seat of her pushchair.

He could see the faces of the people on Kite Hill, watching him, suspicious as he defended himself, and a bubble of laughter burst up in him as he remembered. ‘I am the Queen!' His shoulders shook, a mist of hysteria obscured his vision and he had to stop outside the theatre and wipe his eyes. ‘I am the Queen!' and once inside he gave his name and still smiling, sank gratefully down on to a seat.

 

‘How did it go?' Jemma called to him as soon as he came in.

‘I don't know. All right, I think.' He stamped into the kitchen.

‘When will you know?'

‘They didn't say.'

‘But you must have some kind of idea how it went.'

Dan couldn't help it, he grinned. He'd felt calm and strong when he was finally called in. The words, worried and stumbled over for a week, flew from his mouth as if they were his own. Scarlett Johansson was radiant. Her eyes glittery, her skin translucent, her smile mischievous as he expected it to be. She carried herself lightly, but with a conscious grandeur. Had she been born like that? Or was it being a film star so early that had formed her? Dan watched her, never allowing himself to forget that, he, or his character at least, was her preferred lover.