Bitter Eden: A Novel (16 page)

He looks at me, clearly expecting some profundity, but the presentation is still too sudden, too raw, and the best I can manage is, ‘Such as?’

‘Old Bill Shakespeare’s Macbeth,’ and now I do react, but with consternation and no small measure of distaste, and he goes on, ‘I know exactly what you are going to say – that Shakespeare is dead meat, that the audience will boo the cast off the stage and come wanting to cut off my balls. But I am going to do it like it’s never been done before – shove the bloodshed and the witches and the ghost out front like a whore her cunt, and even slice out some of the lines if there is no other way. In short, my friend, I am going to turn Macbeth into the highfalutin thriller that it really is and have those slobs out there panting for the visuals, but also slotting into the lines because they will want to know what is going on.’

I am listening, but with gathering admiration now, beginning to nod, beginning to see what he sees. Then I am thinking of the characters in the play, trying to remember the little that I learnt of it at school. ‘The head heavy that wanted to chicken out? The butch missus that didn’t give a fuck? Christ, Tony, these were
psychos
! You got guys that can handle
them
?’

He is pleased, slaps my knee. ‘We already have Macbeth – long, sly shit that
always
looks that way and only has to narrow his eyes and he’s
right.
He churns out his lines like they’re a mantra, but, as I said, we’ll pile on the visuals till nobody cares a fuck
what
he says.’

‘And the wife?’

‘You,’ he says and looks at me with such a matter-of-factness that, for a moment, I do not grasp what he has said. Then I do and stand up, saying something like, ‘Thanks for the tea,’ and make to leave, but he holds me back, seats me again on the stool. ‘Wait, man, wait! Don’t be in such a hurry! At least
think
about it before you say “No!”.’

‘What is there to think
about
? Do
you
think I’m one of your pervs that’s going to prance around on that stage in a fucking
dress
?’

Anger, I all too miserably know, is making me say things that I should not, that I will regret, but he does not take offence. ‘Lady M does not
prance
, Tom. She is a
queen.
What is more, she will be wearing a queen’s robe that we will see to it covers everything except your face and hands, and even your hands we will be shoving into gloves if they look too much like a man’s, which I am sure they do, and as for your face, we will do that over till, when you look in a mirror, you will feel
inside
that you are a
queen
rather than a woman, and everybody out there will be seeing you in that same way and not one, I can guarantee you, will be wanting to take you to bed after the show!’

‘So if it’s that easy, why don’t you try your tricks on some other goon? Why pick on me?’

Quietly, his eyes insist that I listen, heed. ‘Do you remember your death scene in that other play and how I battled to make you whisper so that the whole audience could hear, and how, on opening night, you suddenly got it right and never looked back till the end of the run?’ I do not even bother to nod, and he goes on, ‘Well, one of
the
crucial scenes in Macbeth is when wifey walks in her sleep and speaks to the blood on her hands, and I want her to
whisper
those words as you did then, as only you can do now, and
that
is why I am
begging
you to not let me down, to say yes, you will do that for me this one more time!’

‘Great speech,’ I sneer, but already I am feeling the net of my vanity closing around me and I not trying hard enough to get out from under it, and already I am seeing myself playing the part of the Queen and hearing myself imposing only the one condition: that it be left to me to ‘go public’ – by which I mean to tell Danny – in my own time and my own way.

‘Sure,’ he says and shakes my hand, trying not to look as victorious as he feels. He also, on my way out, hands me two Red Cross parcels which a skivvy brings, explaining, deadpan, ‘To fatten you up a bit. Wifey was no pale Ophelia. Probably packed a wallop like a man’s,’ and he looks at me and I look at him, but still do not know which it is – the truth or a bribe? – but also do not really care, only ask him for something to put them in for carrying through a camp that’s all eyes.

Danny’s not there when I get back, as I half-expected would be the case, he not one for lolling around in his bunk, even when it is as cold as it is now and most do. So I shove the parcels in under his bunk and sit down on it and ask myself how and when to tell Danny what, sooner or later, I must, and at once know that I have not even
begun
to think this thing through, that the ‘how’ – and ‘how
much
’ – may still demand of me an answering, but the ‘
when
’ is
right now.
How can I possibly delay telling him the nature of my business with Tony when we are so interlocked, the one with the other, that we even say, ‘I’m going for a shit’ when we are going for a shit? Not only that, but Tony has – knowingly or unknowingly? – trapped me with the parcels under the bunk. How can I remain silent about
them
? Panic mounting, I turn to the ‘how’ and ‘how much’ and am again trapped. I could tell him about the play without telling him what
role
I am going to play, but how long before it all leaks out in a camp that is as much all ears as it is all eyes and I then stand accused of a duplicity that will lose me Danny’s trust as though it had never been?

I am still no nearer a solution, when he walks in, raised eyebrow asking ‘Well?’, and I hear myself saying, instinctively and without fuss, ‘Tony has offered me a part in his new play.’

‘So? Would he be wanting you for anything
else
?’ There is a snideness to the question that I do not miss, but I let it pass.

‘First payment,’ I add, scrabbling the parcels out from under his bunk, awkwardly offering them as to an unpredictable god.

He nudges them with his foot. ‘Looks good. So you’re saying you said “Yes”?’

‘Would you mind?’

‘Nah, not
much.
You’re my mate and you know I don’t like sharing you with those theatre creeps, but you did fine in that other play and I can see it’s what you like to do, like I like to run. So, OK. Let the cameras roll.’

Now he is almost jocular and I make for what I think is the gap. ‘I have to play the part of the queen in Macbeth.’ His face is a montage of flesh turning into stone and I hasten on,
laying
it on, my heart thrashing round like a frightened bird. ‘If you know the play, you will know she’s an evil witch, a real devil under those jewels and the fancy robe, blood all over her hands.’

‘But she’s got tits and a cunt, hasn’t she?’ My face answers for me and he goes on, ‘
You
got that?’ Again my face answers and he rubs it in, ‘So why does this Tony want
you
for the part? Does he think you’re one of his pervs that ponce around like they got a marble up their arse? Why do
you
want the part? For
this
?’ Now he kicks the parcels, so hard that the one skitters back under the bunk. ‘Only whores get paid for getting it shoved up their holes, back or front. You wanting to be a whore?’

‘This,’ I think, ‘is
it
,’ but raw anger seizes me before the as-raw pain, and, for once, the anger steadies me and I say with a calm that hacks through to him as finally as any blade, ‘Tony wants me to do the part because there is a scene in which the Queen whispers to the audience in the way
I
whispered in the play back there. That is all,’ and I want to add that it is all over between us – and a lot more besides – but don’t, partly because heartbreak is overwhelming me and partly because the ‘That is all’ is
not
all, the knowledge of my conceit, of my
wanting
to play the Queen, coming back to haunt me with the horrible resilience of a strangled child.

He leaves then, wheeling hurriedly away, his face an expressionless shield, and does not come back till swill-and-extras time, when he collects his and I collect mine, and I make to climb up onto my bunk, but he unmistakably and unexpectedly moves over, indicating that I should sit in my usual place on his, and a gladness floods me that I know I must not show, and I sit down beside him and we eat in a silence that is more tentative than strained. Near the end, he takes out his slice of the morning’s bread that we always save, and I take out mine and open up the food parcel that I had left lying in the aisle, and find in it a small jar of strawberry jam which I then uncap and offer to him, and he takes it with the delicate hesitancy of a grown wild cat being tempted back into the ‘normal’ world, and spreads a little of the jam on his bread and hands back the jar. So I know, then, that I have scored a victory of a kind, but at a cost because he now often lapses into unaccountable silences during which I will sometimes find him watching me with a speculativeness that disturbs, and, no matter how cold the nights, he no longer clambers up into my bunk to seek and give the warmth that was as much of the heart as of the bones, and there is a heaviness in me because of this that nothing heals.

Right from the start, Tony insists that I rehearse in an ankle-length shift that he has stitched together from odd pieces of cloth for which he could find no better use. ‘So that you can get to know what it’s like to wear a robe,’ he says, and I ask him what the real robe will be like and he says that’s his business, which, indeed, it is, he being the theatre’s only costumier and an irascible and dictatorial one at that. Adept with the needle as with the clippers and blade, he does all his own sewing – although he says he may be taking on some casual ‘seamstresses’ this time round because of the many costumes that the production demands – and he is legendary for never exposing his creations to either the cast’s or the public’s view until the dress rehearsal, when they are trotted out with all the fanfare of a Parisian couturier.

Macbeth would not have had to practise in any shift, he being one of Tony’s stable and, curiously enough, a civvy street cross-dresser who watches my antics with an infuriating mixture of amusement and contempt. ‘Forget him,’ Tony says. ‘On opening night, he will be a nothing, but the goons will be eating out of your hand.’ Then adds, ‘That is, of course, if you do what I say.’ And, truly, I try, but it is a trying by numbers, a constant warning myself not to spread my thighs when I’m sitting down, to scrunch up my buttocks when I walk like, as Danny put it, I’ve got a marble up my arse, to not bat my hands about as if I’m swatting flies, but to keep them supple and subtle as a thief’s or a lover’s – Tony’s words, not mine – but
never
– and Tony mercilessly parodies his own kind – like a
queer.

‘Like what, then?’ I ask.

‘Like a
wife
, you ox! Like a
woman
who just
is
a woman and nothing else. And even
she
is not to be just
aped.
She it is who has always been a part of you, but you never knew it, and now you must know it and wake her and set her free, and she must move your parts and speak with your tongue, and you will look on from the sidelines like the rest of us and ask, “Is that me?” And it will be and yet it won’t, and that is the miracle – the
birth
– which every actor seeks but must not
pursue
or it is lost.’

‘Another great speech, maestro, but you’re forgetting you’re talking about the
me
in this shit,’ and I tug at the shift, ‘and that me knows that there is still nothing there
except
me. Two weeks now and the old cow hasn’t even given a fart to show that she’s alive and kicking and ready to go! For Chrissakes, Tony, why don’t you use one of your guys that
already
feels like a woman and stop wasting your time with me? No matter
how
you pretty me up, I have got balls down there and know it and
like
it and nothing’s going to change!’

‘Now
you
come off it, Tom! If you’ve learnt nothing from the first play you were in, I
have.
You’re a slow starter who needs a first night for everything to come together and turn you on, and how much more
powerful
that turning-on is going to be in the case of you who have never felt like a woman before than in the case of those for whom it is just another strut-around in drag? You concentrate on getting the basics of movements and lines right and the Lady will let you know on opening night that she has been growing in you all the time and is ready at last to quit that womb in you that you never knew you had.’

‘Jesus, you can’t half turn a guy
off
, let alone on! You going to give me a caesarean if I stall?’

‘I don’t think it will come to that,’ he says and flashes me his small, acid grin. ‘Now get to work and don’t mind if I keep on at you because that is what I am not paid to do.’

Actually, Tony does not niggle me all that much. Why, I am not quite sure. Is he trying to demonstrate the fullness of his faith in me or shore up my faltering trust in myself? Whichever the case, he does not go for the jugular like he does with the rest, merely says, ‘I think you know you have to do that again,’ then sits in brooding silence which means I still have got it wrong, and so continues until he at last releases me with a grudging nod that holds more of reservation than acclaim. Such a seemingly preferential treatment of me does not go down well with the rest of the cast and interaction with them – and with Macbeth in particular – becomes an exercise in stoicism for which I am by nature ill-equipped, but when I complain to Tony that I am being treated like a disease, he merely grunts and turns away to sink his teeth into some other poor sod and I am wondering why the fuck I don’t just walk out of here and have done?