New World in the Morning (10 page)

“Children, your father's only joking,” announced my wife, wearily.

“Half joking,” I amended. “Remember, every joke contains an element of truth.” I smiled at Ella, gave her a fond wink. I liked it when she called me Daddy, when she forgot to be acerbic. It was my handling of her which must so frequently have been misguided—tonight, she'd been delighted with the bracelet, touchingly pleased it hadn't just come out of stock but had been chosen with great care at a jeweller's in the High Street. (All right, this was a fabrication but one which had given an immense amount of pleasure; whatever I did, I must on no account forget to mention it to Mavis.) And I resolved to cultivate Ella's friendship more assiduously than I feared had often been the case.

“So how precisely would we live?” asked Junie.

“Why, very much as we do now. You yourself could run the shop.” I was talking wholly impromptu but growing more and more convinced as I did so. “I don't know why we've never thought of that before.”

“Well, I do. I do! You've always told me you don't approve of working wives. You've always said it's the man who ought to earn the living.”

“Just like I've always said it's the man who ought to decorate the house.”

“Exactly.”

“Then maybe I've been wrong. My God! Haven't I just been shown some pretty overwhelming evidence?”

“What! Can I quote you on that?” asked my son.

“
May
I quote you on that? My young Matthias, I hope I never mind admitting if I've been at fault. Old-fashioned—anachronistic—whatever. I'm not always that bright. I make mistakes. I know I'm superficial. But people change. People do change. You've got to give me that.”

He was pretending to write it down; using his tablemat as a reporter's notepad. “What came after ‘not always that bright'? What came before ‘not always that bright'? I need to do you justice.”

“You need to be a lot less cheeky. This is a meaningful discussion.”

“Sam, are you really serious about this?” Junie was staring at me as though I was someone who'd just wandered in off the street and helped himself to vegetables.

“Yes, indeed I am. About what, precisely?”

She spread her hands, a little helplessly. “Well, about wanting to go on the stage.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

There was a pause. I said: “I realize that I may have been sounding a tad frivolous but even so—”

“Oh! In a minute he's going to tell us he was only joking,” interrupted Matt, sadly. “I mean, about ‘superficial' and the rest of it.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. He'd clearly forgotten yesterday's kiss on the back of my neck and what had given rise to it. Well, only to be expected. Thoroughly normal. Perhaps tomorrow he'd remember it. Or ten years from tomorrow. Or fifty.

“But even so,” I continued, “you'd hardly have wanted me to get all intense and heavy about it, would you?”

“Daddy, I think you've been sounding fine.”

“Thank you, darling. I appreciate that.”

Junie began to giggle.

The giggling went on. She had to wipe her eyes. The children joined in—me, as well—puzzled though we all were.

“Mimsy and Pim!” she said. “Mimsy and Pim would have a fit. Only remember how they reacted when you decided to leave the bank!”

“Is that why you're laughing?”

She nodded.

“Your mother and father,” I observed gently, “have no say whatever in the way we live our lives.”

In spite of her own implied criticism, there followed a slightly uncomfortable silence. I had often wished—in one respect, anyhow—that the loan they'd made us when we bought the house hadn't been converted into a gift as soon as I could have begun to pay them back.

“It's none of Mimsy's business!” declared Matt, hotly, apparently deciding, after all, that perhaps I did have the looks and unconsciously relegating his grandfather to the subordinate position which indeed he held.

“Now, stop it, that isn't respectful,” said Junie. “And all this is getting out of hand! To be honest, Sam, I'd probably quite enjoy managing the shop but I thought you were perfectly happy with the way things were. It never occurred to me—”

“I am,” I answered. “I am.” I'd finished my meal and now I went round behind her to kiss the top of her head. “I'm as happy as anybody ever could be. I have an excellent wife and two excellent children. What more could a man ask for? It's just that occasionally one likes to dream. To dream of doing something a little more colourful. To dream of…” I hesitated.

“What?”

“Oh, I don't know.” I became self-mockingly grandiloquent. “Of sailing into unmapped waters, of spreading one's wings like a wandering albatross—or a sunbird—or a roc. Of realizing perhaps a larger bit of one's potential.”

“Trust our dad! Who else would ever spread his wings like a rock? Who else would even think of it?”

“R-o-c,” I smiled. “As you very well appreciate, little monster.” Matt had been all but weaned on the adventures of Sinbad.

“Yet getting back to the subject in hand…?” prompted Junie.

I gave a shrug. “Oh—as I said—I'm probably being adolescent. Stargazing. After all…out of every thousand expiring actors how many d'you suppose ever really get there?”

“Possibly,” said Matt, “aspiring ones might stand a
fractionally
better chance.”

“Why? What did I say? Nonsense,” after he'd explained, “you're imagining things! I'll go to make the coffee.”

Junie called after me. “But you could if you truly wanted. If you thought there'd be the slightest possibility. I wouldn't try to stop you.”

“Yes, go on, Dad, why don't you?” shouted Matt. “You old expiring actor, you! And anyway what's so wrong, I'd like to know, about being adolescent?”

“Bet you could, Daddy,” added Ella. “You're by far the hunkiest dad in Deal.”

I put my head back through the doorway.

“You're very sweet, all of you! We'll have to see. No promises, mind. I certainly don't mean to rush into anything. I plan to be incredibly circumspect.”

Head withdrawn. Head put back again.

“And, Matt, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an adolescent! Nothing! Don't you think it for an instant.”

Junie followed me out into the kitchen. “Oh, by the way, Mimsy and Pim were heartbroken to hear about Susie. But they're keeping their fingers crossed. And if there's anything they can do…”

“That's very kind,” I murmured.

“And they thought you were totally wonderful yesterday. But they told me not to tell you.”

I laughed. Junie went back to fetch more things off the table—or possibly to encourage the children to do so. For the moment, I forgot about making coffee. Supposing I
could
get into RADA? It wasn't feasible, of course…but just supposing? Not simply would it be a means of expanding my horizons: of maybe one day actually travelling a bit, of getting
really
overseas: to New York perhaps (to check out the delis), San Francisco, Hollywood. It would also mean that, sooner than this, at least during RADA's term-time, I'd be able to stay partly in London: an end to any problem over being with Moira. (And indeed wouldn't that alone represent an expansion to my horizons!) It seemed too good to be true, a readymade solution when as yet I'd hardly been on the lookout for one: thinking no further than that little house in Silver Street, which I now saw would have been hopelessly impractical. But this changed everything. Moira in the week; Junie and the children at weekends. The ingredients for paradise.

For paradise… Capten, art tha listenin' there below?

And—who knew—into the bargain I might even make a reputation?

The possibilities seemed endless.

In the end I didn't even go to Ruth Minton's. The deep blue sea still beckoned but this was a deeper, bluer, wider, warmer, infinitely more inviting ocean than any that had ever lapped upon the shores of Dover or of Deal.

And to expand a little on that Rattigan metaphor…the sleeping prince had finally—finally!—awoken.

Later, he wrote a lengthy letter to RADA, this newly arisen prince; addressed it simply to The Secretary, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. If it was meant to get there, then it
would
get there…and I knew for certain that it was. I asked for information regarding grants, scholarships, auditions. I listed the plays I'd been in and let them have a recent photograph I liked—it had been taken on the beach and made me look all of twenty-eight—together with five hundred words on why I thought I should be suitable. I knew full well I had to sell myself.

I enclosed a stamped addressed envelope, and copies of cuttings from the
East Kent Mercury
.

The mouths of pillar boxes were too small, so for the second time that day I walked to the post office. At such an hour it seemed odd to be doing this without Susie, practically disloyal—and, naturally, there wouldn't be any collection before morning—yet at the same time it was comforting to suppose that my fate was now stamped, sealed, very nearly official, and would soon be winging its way into the hands of arbiters. Or at least—not to get
too
metaphoric or highflown or roc-like about it—to suppose the envelope was.

(Though for Junie's sake—no, for all our sakes—I certainly wanted to remain rocklike. As rocklike as ever.)

That night the count was up to almost a thousand…

Yow-w-w-w!

11

The following morning partial sanity returned—although, thankfully, only partial. For the first moment, I felt alarmed by what I'd done, but then I laughed and shrugged and thought oh what the hell. Cast your bread upon the waters…nothing ventured, nothing gained! All my life, I now believed, I'd played things far too safe. I was thirty-six. In another four years…! Thank God I'd woken up in time.

Ungrudging endorsement: the phone at the shop rang merely a few minutes after I had walked in.

“Sam? Good morning. This is Moira Sheffield.”

I'd recognized her voice on the first syllable. Although my heart at once reacted it hadn't had time to monkey with either my pitch or my phrasing. “Sweet heaven,” I declared. “I was just thinking of you.”

“Really? What were you thinking?”

“Only the worst.”

“What a relief! How are you?”

“Fantastic. You?”

“Also pretty well. But listen, Sam. I've decided I shan't be coming back to Deal next weekend, I—”

“Oh,
no
!”

I shouldn't have said that, obviously I shouldn't, at least not with such emphasis. The words had been shocked from me. I felt cold with disappointment.

“But wait,” she said, “let me tell you why. I've been offered two tickets for that new American musical, the one at present getting so much hype, and frankly I hadn't the chutzpah to turn them down. And then the title seemed to clinch it.
Half a Farthing, Sam Sparrow?
Oh, what relevance! They're for next Saturday evening. I wondered if you'd like to come.”

“My God.”

She laughed. “Is that a yes?”

“Exact translation: I should
love
to come. There's nothing that could possibly give me any greater pleasure…” Yet I was speaking with deliberation. My brain was trying frantically to get to grips. In my own mind the sentence wasn't finished but she didn't realize this.

“I'm so glad. I think that—despite the hype—the show should turn out to be fun.”

“I haven't really caught the hype, just the hit tune, which is as catchy as all get-out.” (Strange lyric, though: ‘You feel that you're on trial, and so you're in denial, you want to cry and run a mile, but still you lie and still you smile, and smile and smile and smile…' Rather dopey.)

“Yes, hard to get it out of your mind, once it's there; no doubt we'll drive each other crazy! Now what I also thought was this: is there any chance of your making a full weekend out of it—coming here on Friday night—getting your assistant (Liz tells me she feels sure you have one) to be in charge on Saturday? There's plenty of room at the flat and I've already made some plans for interesting things we could do together—you said the other day you don't know London awfully well…” But then she faltered. “Or do you think I'm being presumptuous?”

“Presumptuous? Good heavens, no. It all sounds out of this world, but…”

“Is it your grandmother? I was worried it mightn't be as easy as I hoped.”

“Yes. May I ring you back? Say—in an hour? Will you be home?”

She gave me her number. “See what you can manage, then.” I promised that I would. We ended, a bit bathetically, talking about transport.

Forty minutes later I rang Junie.

“Darling, guess what! Guess whom I've just heard from!”

“RADA. They've offered you a place.”

“Not yet,” I said, “although I admit they're being a little slow.”

“Then I give up,” she said. “Who?”

“John Caterham.”

“John Caterham! Good gracious! You mean the John Caterham who was in our class at school?”

“As opposed to all the other John Caterhams we know?”

“But how—why—where? I wouldn't have thought he'd even got your number! Or knew what the shop was called! Where was he phoning from? Or do you mean it was a letter?”

“No, I spoke to him. He asked after you, of course. Sent his love. Couldn't believe our children are now old enough to be at the County High or that old Hinchcliff
still
hasn't retired.”

“But what about his own children? Aren't they—?”

“Remember he married later than we did. Well, come to that, I imagine
everyone
married later than we did.”