David Mitchell: Back Story (12 page)

But during the hours of waiting for everyone to get through this process, and then the hour or so while the audience arrived, and then the hours of the show itself, which I resolutely ignored apart from my two-minute appearance, there was plenty of time for playing cards. This felt like the most fun I’d ever had in my life. I’d been taught pontoon by my grandfather (the second nicest one), but to play it with other boys of my own age – to get to teach some of them the rules – was hugely exciting. It felt very grown-up and sophisticated, particularly because it involved betting (albeit only with matchsticks) but also because it had its own little argot: not just the names of the cards but things like ‘twist’, ‘bust’ and ‘five card trick’.

I was very disappointed, and slightly alienated, to discover many years later, on a stag do, that the casino version of the game not only has a different name – blackjack – but also different words and conventions for everything. You’re not supposed to say things like ‘twist’ and you get treated like a rube if you do, so it turns out that my schoolboy sense of sophistication was illusory. And of course it struck me as illogical and unfair that ‘twist’ exists as a word – an obscure way of asking for a card that you have to be in the know to be aware of – but quickly becomes obsolete when you get even deeper in the know. It would be like mariners not only having the words ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ instead of left and right but also a secret rule which stated that, when you really became a seasoned seafarer, you reverted to saying left and right. For some reason, I expected better from these people who were trying to cheat me of my money.

Back at school, before I was aware that it was possible to spend an evening playing games of chance without the excuse of a theatrical production, I decided to sign up for every play going – which, unfortunately, was only two a year. In the following year’s Christmas production, I was given my first line – and I’ve been battling cocaine ever since.

No, I’ve never, in fact, had cocaine. No one has ever offered me any cocaine. I work in showbusiness and no one has ever offered me any cocaine.

Can you believe that? What’s wrong with me? I don’t want any cocaine, by the way (in case you were offering – which, experience suggests, you weren’t) but it would have been nice to be offered once or twice. It’s like being a vegetarian to whom no one has ever offered any meat. They wouldn’t be pleased. A vegetarian doesn’t want meat but neither does he (or she – usually she, let’s be honest) want the thought that, as soon as she enters a room, everyone
assumes
she’s a vegetarian. No one, however merciful towards animals, wants to look so vegetarian in every way that no one has even bothered to check. That’s how I am with cocaine and it makes me worry I’m not always the life and soul of the party that I feel like in my head.

Anyway, I was given my first line of dialogue in the next year’s production and it was: ‘Vespasian, centurion.’ Two nouns, one of them proper. I think the centurion is trying to remember who the current Roman emperor is after a year of political instability and each of his soldiers, of whom I was one, makes a suggestion. On consulting Wikipedia, I learn that, after the death of Nero in AD 68, there were four Roman emperors in quick succession – Galba, Otho, Vitellius and then Vespasian. It was this fact that the author of this comic play set in Roman times, presented by and for children, who was also a Latin teacher at the school (Mr Roberts), was seeking to do a joke on. That’s the sort of thing that gives dumbing down a good name.

It was very enterprising of a teacher to write the school play but I didn’t feel that the line ‘Vespasian, centurion’ was exactly a zinger. I’m not saying I could have got full value out of ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!’ but with ‘Vespasian, centurion’ I didn’t think I’d been given the equipment with which to amuse. I felt in need of a bed of nails or even a hockey stick. When I said ‘Vespasian, centurion’ at the point instructed, the audience showed no sign at all of having noticed. But the good news was that saying ‘Vespasian, centurion’ didn’t eat seriously into my card-playing time, which kept the magic of theatre alive in my heart.

The next year’s production presented a problem: I was given quite a large part. It was an adaptation of
Winnie-the-Pooh
and I was cast as Rabbit. This is the first time I can remember acting, rather than just moving and standing, and occasionally saying ‘Vespasian, centurion’ in exactly the way I was told. In our family car we had a tape, which I would ask to hear again and again, of Lionel Jeffries reading
Winnie-the-Pooh
. It’s a brilliant reading by a terrific actor. If you think you don’t know who Lionel Jeffries is, you’d probably recognise his face and bald pate. Among hundreds of roles, he played Dick Van Dyke’s father in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
and did a rather moving turn as the patriarch of a brewing family in an episode of
Inspector Morse
.

Anyway, he read Rabbit with a sort of clipped military Field Marshal Montgomery voice, and I had the idea when auditioning for the show (and I mean ‘idea’ very much in the sense that advertising creatives use it) of copying him. This immediately put me head and shoulders above anyone else who read for the part – I already had a performance. When I landed the role, I remember counting my lines – I had well over a hundred! I’d hit the big time and, in that production, I had no time for playing pontoon. Fortunately for my future financial security, I found that I enjoyed the performing even more than the cards. (I say ‘fortunately’ but then acting is hardly the most secure financial path you can tread – and I’m reliably informed that some people make a very good living playing poker, although I don’t think the same can be said for pontoon.)

And with my first stage performance of any size came my first on-stage cock-up. The approach to theatre at New College School was an old-fashioned one. Realism, wherever possible, was demanded. I have extremely fond memories of the set: no short cuts, no simplified black box staging, none of that theatrical bullshit that, in our heart of hearts, we all know is an excuse to save effort or money. No, there were trees and burrows and bushes and paths and doorways and a bridge and a river all crammed onto the stage in the school hall, all lovingly recreated in wood and paint.

For the scene in the snow – the first story from
House at Pooh Corner
in which Pooh and Piglet decide to build Eeyore a house and in the process accidentally demolish the one Eeyore has just built for himself (they mistake the structure for a pile of sticks) – the set was transformed, in a quick scene change, into a snowy landscape, complete with cotton wool snow along the railings of the bridge. I thought that was amazing.

And the commitment to realism extended to the costumes. The animal characters weren’t alluded to with, say, a pair of ears while the rest of the costume was human in a way that reflected the character’s personality. Oh no. We were head to toe, fingertip to fingertip in fake fur. Only our faces showed. This led to my mistake.

There is a scene in which Rabbit has to read out a plan to drive Kanga out of the wood – it’s in the form of a long list. He doesn’t like immigrants basically but, like many extremists, he’s attempted to rationalise his instinctive xenophobia into some sort of coherent philosophy. It’s a very funny list which I had
sort of
learned. Not as well as I’d learned my other lines because this bit, I reasoned, I’d be reading out. It is not a good idea, I now know, to
sort of
learn anything – to ‘become familiar’ with it. It’s worthless. Either learn it or don’t. If you’re going to read it out, just admit that and don’t in any way lull yourself into a false sense that, were the piece of paper to go missing, you’d probably be okay.

The piece of paper did not go missing, by the way. I am very organised about props. People who mess with them get my full anal barrage (by this, I do not mean that I shit on them – I’m using anal in its modern slang sense). The piece of paper was where it should have been – folded up in the pocket of Rabbit’s waistcoat (which I wore over the top half of the fur body suit; I did not wear anything over its bottom half, but that’s okay because there is a strong convention that the anthropomorphised animals of children’s stories are non-genital).

The only problem was that when I came to read out the list on stage, I couldn’t unfold it because of the ridiculous furry mittens I was wearing in order to complete the illusion that I was in fact a talking rabbit. I was able, with difficulty, to fish it out of my pocket, but that was all. The words were on the inside. All I could do was stare at the blank, white, folded quarter of A4 and try to remember my lines, a process not helped by simultaneously having to surf a wave of panic.

But it could have been worse. I fluffed a bit, I approximated, I probably went slightly red but, in the context of a prep school play, the standard of professionalism probably didn’t fall perceptibly below the mean. What interests me about it is that, afterwards, one of the directors of the show, Mr Sleigh, to whom I’d been recounting my mittens nightmare with a verve worthy of a classic anecdote about Gielgud getting caught cottaging, said that I should have taken the mittens off to unfold the list. He said it would have been funny.

He was right, of course. But it had never occurred to me to do that. In my mind, I was pretending to be a rabbit and the rabbit wasn’t wearing gloves. I felt that to take them off, assuming people didn’t scream because they thought the giant rabbit was now skinning its own hands, would have been to shatter the illusion – as surely as if I’d gone off stage and fetched the script. It would have been
cheating
. I wanted to say: ‘Look, am I pretending to be a rabbit or not?’ But it stayed in my head, that idea of how you could cheat in a performance – the thought that, as the audience members were suspending their disbelief anyway (I certainly didn’t think that anyone believed I was a rabbit), they’ll suspend it a bit further if you give them a joke.

Whether on stage, on TV or, I suppose, in a film, although I’ve had very little experience of that, it’s a tricky thing knowing how much you can ‘break the fourth wall’, acknowledge the pretence. The right decision usually depends on context and, by keeping the mittens on, I was rightly erring on the cautious side even if I lost a laugh. But this early directorial note is interesting because it lodged firmly in my mind the idea that, when you’re performing, what you’re primarily doing is telling a story and trying to entertain, not just pretending to be something that you’re not.

The other distressing event in that show was the moment towards the end when I was supposed to hug and kiss another boy. You’re probably thinking: ‘I don’t remember that bit in
Winnie-the-Pooh
!’ Don’t you? That story where Rabbit professes undying love for Eeyore and starts to hump his leg? Don’t worry, that’s just in the fan fiction (or that’s what I imagine – there’s a big internet out there: get googling!).

No: this was in a story where some of the animals, Rabbit amongst them, get lost in the woods. I think it’s basically Rabbit’s fault – this is very much the Arnhem campaign to his getting-Pooh-unstuck-from-his-front-door El Alamein. And Tigger finds them. Tigger, to whom Rabbit, informed by the xenophobic instincts that also made him dislike Kanga, has up to this point been markedly hostile.

I can now understand why Mr Sleigh thought it would be funny if, when Tigger comes to the rescue, Rabbit throws himself at him in a massive hug and kiss of gratitude. At the time, I couldn’t quite believe the suggestion. I actually thought he was joking. I wouldn’t have been any more shocked if he’d suggested I should get down on my knees and take his cock in my mouth. Fortunately I didn’t go to that sort of school.

I think, in the end, I managed to sort of touch Tigger’s shoulders effusively. The boy in the tiger suit was no keener on the idea than I was, and was in the lucky position of only having to be hugged. He could just stay still and he chose to do this on all fours – for tigerish verisimilitude – which made hugging a tricky thing to do anyway. I completely failed to realise Mr Sleigh’s comic moment of relief-driven hypocritical affection, and still that was the moment in the show that I most dreaded.

This wasn’t the same awkwardness as that which attended the idea of love scenes in
A Christmas Carol
two years before. It was no longer as specific as not wanting to play another boy’s love interest, or to be seen to be soppy. It had grown into a wholesale rejection of
any physical contact at all
. Even a simple hug seemed preposterous, with anyone. I was as confident in this insight as those people who can’t see the point of real Christmas trees are that it’s much less messy to plug in an artificial one year after year. None of their reasoning is wrong. There’s just something else they’re not getting.

Where did that repression come from? Not from my parents – they’ve always been very affectionate – and not, it seems, from the teachers at my old-fashioned prep school. But there was something in me that found even the simulation of this sort of harmless affection terrifying. Maybe all boys of that age – I think I was 12 – feel the same. Maybe it’s to do with a fear of being or being perceived to be gay? Or maybe it’s just that there’s always something a bit disgusting about other humans that, in the absence of sexual attraction, can be gruelling to get over as an adult but, for a child, is impossible – just as an adult me could choke down disgusting gooseberry pie which I absolutely couldn’t when I was little.

Whatever the reason, at the time I was happy and confident in the belief that there was really no need for one human
ever
to hug or kiss another. (You may be surprised to learn that I no longer subscribe to that view.) I would indulge my parents in such activity because they were in denial about my maturity, but basically those things were for babies and very small children – and thus they were of the past, and not in a good way like plus-fours. I’d left all that behind and this was a thought that contented me. I did not yet know the facts of life.