Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 07] (6 page)

The introductions were
a bit of a blur and, by the end of it, I’d only got about four people’s names.

Then we had to say our
name again and do an action that started with the same letter as your name.

‘Make it as mad as you
like,’ said Jo.

Everyone seemed a bit
shy at first, so I decided to start us off as we’ve done stuff like this in
drama at school.

‘Nesta. Napping,’ I
said, then closed my eyes and put my head on one side.

Izzie went next.
‘Izzie: itching.’ That got a laugh as she played out scratching herself all
over. After that the others were off.

‘Jan: jumping.’

‘Dave: drawing.’

‘Catherine: canoeing.’

There were twelve of
us in all and the game seemed to do the trick as, afterwards, most of us found
we could remember most people’s names.

I’m going to enjoy
this, I thought as Jo asked us to stand anywhere in the room.

‘Choose a character,’ she
said, ‘male or female, any age, then walk round the room as you imagine they
would.’

I decided to do a
bloke I’d seen walking down Archway Road last week. He walked like a gorilla
with a swagger. A real tough man. After we’d swaggered, minced, strode, tiptoed
round for a while, Jo asked us to lie on the floor and go to sleep in the
manner of our character. I lay in the corner and started snoring. After a
while, Jo said, ‘OK, now it’s six a.m. What’s your character doing now?’

I heard a few people
get up but I stayed where I was. No way, my character would be out of bed yet.
He was a yob. Probably didn’t even know that there were two six o’clocks in a
day.

Jo went on. ‘And now
it’s seven a.m.’ I could hear more people get up. When she said, ‘Eight,’ even more
got up. As she said, ‘Nine,’ then, ‘Ten,’ then, ‘Eleven. What’s your character
doing now?’ I could hear that everyone was up. I opened my eyes and sneaked a
look. My fellow luvvies were acting their socks off, miming driving, typing, on
the phone, eating, talking, having a life.

‘OK, twelve o’clock
and what are your characters doing now?’ said Jo. ‘Er, on the floor, Napping
Nesta isn’t it? Is there a problem? I see your character hasn’t done anything?
Are you stuck about what to do?’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘My
character’s a lazy yob and never gets out of bed before one.’

In the corner, Izzie
cracked up.

‘OK,’ said Jo. ‘Maybe
your yob could get up a bit earlier today so that you get something out of the
exercise.’

‘OK,’ I said. I got
up, mimed having a fag, lay about, scratched a bit, watched telly and studied
the others. Some people were really going for it. Bet they’re sorry they picked
such overactive characters, I thought as I mimed having another fag.

When we’d all finished
our day, everyone had to say what character they’d been doing. Izzie, poor
thing, had played her mum and had had to get up at six-thirty to go to work.
She had her mum’s walk down really well though.

‘People think that
acting is about learning lines,’ said Jo, ‘and to some degree of course, it is.
But there’s so much more to it than that, which is why I wanted to start with
this exercise. Think about it. Before someone has even opened their mouth,
other people have made an assessment or a judgement. Why is it, we steer away
from certain people on the street, others we feel are OK?’

‘Clothes, image,’ I
said. ‘Your choice of style says a lot about you.’

‘Yes, but even more
than that,’ said Jo. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Body language,’ said
Jan, the white-haired lady.

‘Exactly,’ said Jo.
‘How people walk, how they sit, how they hold themselves, says infinitely more
than what they choose to verbalise or choose to wear. In the same way, if you
want to act, your audience has to know who your character is the second you
walk on the stage, way before you begin to say your lines. It’s not enough to
just put on a costume. You can’t just walk on as you in another person’s
clothes and expect to be believed as someone else.’

What Jo said was very
true, I thought. One of the things I love doing is sitting in cafes watching
people go by and I’ve always thought that you can tell so much about them by
how they walk, whether they scrunch their shoulders up, if they stride or
dawdle. Like even at school, without visuals, you can tell which teacher is
coming along the corridor by the sound of their footsteps. Mrs Allen’s are
really quick, confident, like she doesn’t have time to waste. Click, clack,
click. Miss Watkins’ are slower, more considered, sort of ploddy like she is.
I’m going to really watch people and how they walk from now on, I decided, so
that I can put it into practice for different roles in my acting career.

After the ‘character’
exercise, we played some games where we had to close our eyes and wander round
the room trying to work out where other people were by the sounds they made. At
first I couldn’t see the point of it, but afterwards Jo explained that one of
the first things you had to learn on stage was awareness of other actors. ‘So
many people are so concerned about doing their bit, their moment in the
spotlight, that they forget that they’re part of a team.’

By the end of the
class, I was well impressed. I felt I’d learned loads in just over an hour and
still had much, much more to discover.

‘That was five quid
well spent,’ I whispered to Izzie as we got our coats to leave at the end. She
nodded and, as I turned to the windowsill to get my scarf, I was aware that
someone had walked in behind us.

Izzie nudged me. ‘Eyes
left,’ she said. ‘Ding
do-nnggg
!

Ding dong is our new
alert for when there’s talent around. Lucy’s brother Lai started it after he’d
watched the movie,
Carry On Nurse
. Leslie Phillips plays a character
called Jack Bell in the film and he says, ‘Ding dong’ whenever he sees someone
he fancies. We’ve all started saying it now along with, ‘Oo, matron!’, an
expression used by the character played by Kenneth Williams in later
Carry
On
films. People at school think we’re mad, but we all think it’s
hysterically funny especially if Mrs Allen is reading out something really
serious and Lucy. TJ, Izzie and I all turn to each other and mouth, ‘Oo,
matron!’

I turned to see a boy
going up to Jo. I couldn’t see his face, but from the back he had dark hair and
was wearing a calf-length tweedy coat and a red scarf. Trained up as I was now,
I could tell just by his body language that he was flustered. Izzie and I
strained to hear what he was saying.

‘I’m 50 sorry,’ he
said. ‘I went to the wrong place. I thought the class was at the Institute so I
went there then by the time I discovered I was in the wrong place, the class
here had already started. I tried to get here, but I had to wait ages for a bus
and…’

Jo smiled at him. ‘No
problem. At least now you know where we are for next week.’ She checked her
list. ‘You must be… Luke.’

‘Yeah.
Luke De Biasi.’

‘Well, it’s a bit late
to introduce you now,’ said Jo indicating the rest of us,‘as we’re all just
leaving, but these are the people who will be in the class with you.’

As Luke turned round
to look at the group, I quickly turned away, so that he wouldn’t catch me
staring. Izzie wasn’t as cool. She dug her elbow into my back and whispered,
‘Hubba hubba.’

I couldn’t resist, so
turned for a quick peek at him. When I saw his face, my peek became a look that
lasted… and lasted… I couldn’t help it. I knew that I ought to look away, but
something in his eyes held me like a magnet. Time slowed down and my heart
seemed to speed up. It was like Luke and I were the only two people in the
room. Finally I broke his gaze and ran.

Oo,
Matron!

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Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ugggggggggg.
Arghhhhhhhhhhh
. That’s all I can say, I thought, as I stared at my
reflection in the wardrobe mirror before I got into bed later that night.
Sometimes life is so unfair. Why, oh
why
would I have to see the boy
of my dreams when I look like a tin opener? We haven’t even met properly. We
haven’t
even
spoken and yet I know that he’s special. I felt like I’d
seen him before, then I remembered where. TJ’s house. There’s a painting in
their hall. TJ said it’s by a Pre-Raphaelite painter called Edward Burne-Jones
and it’s called ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’. Anyway, Luke looks like the man in
it. Dark eyes, high cheek bones, wide mouth and I loved the coat he wore to the
drama class. It looked like vintage American, like the ones that men wore in
old black and white movie classics. Really cool. I smiled at my reflection
again. The killer shark from the film
Jaws
grimaced back at me. No.
There was no getting away from it. I looked horrible. The girls may say I have
other things going for me but, when I open my mouth, all you see is the brace.
It’s like, you can have a huge fifty foot white wall but, if there’s one black
dot on it, that’s what your eye will be drawn towards. So agh. Ug. Argh. And,
as Izzie would say, poo.

Luke. I could still
see him in my mind’s eye. Aristocratic-looking. Roman-looking in fact. His name
is Italian.
Luke De Biasi.
Probably called Luca at home. He was
very good-looking, but more than that, and I know Izzie would laugh at me for
saying it, he looked intelligent. He did. There was something in his eyes. And
I don’t mean contact lenses.

Anyway that’s the last
time I’ll see him, I thought, because no way can I go back to that class if
he’s going to be in it. I’ll have to wait a year and bump into him when I’ve
had my brace off and can smile at people and talk to them again.

Izzie said I was being
stupid when I told her that I wasn’t going back. Honestly, and she has the
cheek to say that I’m blunt sometimes. Calling me stupid. Huh! That’s not
exactly tact city. She doesn’t understand. I could never relax in class knowing
that he was there, watching me, thinking nice face, shame about the metal
munchers. No,

I couldn’t possibly. I
know that boys imagine snogging as well as girls, but I can’t believe that
braces figure highly on the fave fantasy girl requirement list. Like: nice
hair, good legs, great bod, attractive mouth, brace.

I don’t know. Maybe I
could
go back to class. I could be a quiet member of the group. An observer. There to
learn. I could be silent. Never open my mouth. I could be mysterious.
Enigmatic.

Hah! Who am I kidding?
Gobby is my middle name.

I spent a few minutes
practising my closed mouth smile in the mirror as I considered my options.

Forget him? Not an
option.

Postpone meeting him
until the brace is removed? No. Can’t do that. He might have a girlfriend by
then.Yikes. He might have a girlfriend
nowl
Of course he might.
Probably does. All the more reason for
not
postponing meeting him. I
have to find out where I stand.

Go to class but
disguise the fact I have a brace in. Hhhmm. Maybe. Yes. I think that’s the best
plan. Is it? Isn’t it? I know! I could get one of those head-to-toe tent
dresses that some Muslim women wear to cover themselves. I could pretend I’m a
new girl in class and I
am
Muslim. Yes! That’s it. No one would ever
know. Izzie could just say that Nesta decided not to do the class any more, but
another friend of hers has come instead. Her
Muslim
friend, Mustapha
Bracein. Then I could watch him from inside my dress. Burkas, I think they’re
called.

Yeah. Brilliant idea.
Or is it? Hhmm. Best sleep on it, I thought, I can’t decide now and if I try
to, I think I may well blow a fuse in my brain.

I woke up the next
morning with the solution. Or solutions. Disguise, distraction and decoys. My
first plan was to wear a balaclava not a burka. Tony’s got one for when he
eventually gets to go skiing. He is funny. He knows Mum hasn’t got the money to
pay for him to go and he hasn’t got any of the really expensive equipment he
needs, but he has got a balaclava. Izzie told him that he had to start
somewhere and that sometimes if you make a symbolic step towards your
goal/dream or whatever, the universe conspires to make it happen. Yeah, right.
Mystic Izzie. She’s bonkers. Anyway, Tony let me borrow his strange but symbolic
woolly hat, but sadly it didn’t go down too well at school.

‘Nesta Williams, can
you give me any explanation as to why you find it necessary to wear a woolly
hat in the art class?’ asked Mrs Elwes.

‘It’s a balaclava,
Miss.’