“All right.”Laurie let him go, then suddenly grasped both hishands.“I tell you what.Come with me!Stand out there and see whatit’s like, just one time.We can pass you off as a courtier orsomething.”
“Laurie, it’s not panto.And I don’t...I’m not about tobepassed offasanything.”
It waslightly said, breathless laughter still touching Sasha’s voice.Butsomething in the words jarred them both, and they stood still,staring at one another.Laurie was the first to break free of themoment.“Okay,” he whispered, and pressed to Sasha’s lips apromise, a velvet-hot kiss.“But come up and meet me after, allright?And then we’ll go home.”
***
TheAll’s Welldirector was hovering in the wings on Laurie’s return,performing a small, twitchy jig unbecoming to his years and status.“Fuckinghell,Fitzroy,” he whispered, beckoning frenetically.“What was that?Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’emwait?”
“No, sir,” Laurie said sincerely.He couldn’t think what hadgotten into him, unless it had been Bertram, who did not care atoss about etiquette to the audience and fellow actors.“Not atall.I’m very sorry.”
“I’ve sent the support leads out twice.I was about to have thedamn Clown go out and do back-flips.”
Laurierepressed a grin.It might not be panto, but sometimes it was verylike it.“I really am sorry, Kenneth.”
“Well, never mind.”Kenneth gestured at the soldiers, commonersand royalty milling around among the backdrops.“Gather, gather!His fucking Majesty Lord Count Bertram bloody Fitzroy finallydeigned to join us.Move out!”
Laurieallowed himself to be swept along.Gem Lloyd had hooked an armthrough his and was dancing at his side.Parolles, no respecter ofyoung male actors’ persons, was hustling him from the rear.Kennethstrode in their midst like an excited heron.“Swear to God,children, I ought to be knighted for that dumb-show wedding.Froze’em to their seats every time!”
Gemnodded vigorously.“Better for Laurie, too.Every bugger in theplay’s got better lines than Bertram.Let him do his stuff in totalsilence, though...They were terrified.”
“So were you, from the look of things.”Kenneth lined his castup behind the great dark curtain.“That was a nice bit of business,flinching away from him.Why’d you keep that for last night, youdamned minx?”
“It wasn’tactuallyon purpose.”Gem increased her grip on Laurie’sarm, tipped up to him a daisy face turned to flamboyant orchid byher paint.There was a touch of uncertainty in her smile.“Youdidn’t see how he looked at me.”
Lauriecouldn’t remember.He loved Gem.He disengaged his arm, put itround her waist and hugged her.“Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Well, you really put the shits up me.”The curtain rose, andwith that line she smiled sweetly and sailed out to take her call,her unwilling husband in tow.Neither could resist a littlelast-night vaudeville shtick, and the audience roared as Bertramdragged his feet and gestured pathetically to Parolles for help.Then Laurie, suddenly serious as a soldier hearing his commander’svoice, took her gently by the hand and conducted her front andcentre for their bow.
What didit mean to him—this moment on the shore of fame’s ocean, washedtime and time again with sound and the reflected glow of stagelights from a thousand faces?It had used to mean simply that hehad done well—pleased them, and he had therefore done his job,could pay his rent, treat Sash to a posh dinner.A time had comewhen it had meant a social worker’s visit, and—at last, after ayear of paperwork—permission for his little sister Clara to livewith him during her school terms.It had meant food, a home,security.
And nowit meant more.Christ, they were getting to their feet—the frontrows first, then like a contagion of excitement the rest of thepit, then the circle, and even those precipitously perched in thegods.The languorous groups in the boxes, rising too, plumpbejewelled hands thudding together with a sound like doves’wings...Laurie’s skin prickled.His eyes stung with tears.Gem letgo of his hand and gave him a little shove, ceding their sharedplace to him.He glanced at her in protest but she was smiling, herkohl-rimmed gaze wistful, as if she’d suffered some painless,profound inner defeat.Laurie stepped forward and bowed deeply tohis audience—hailed by a thousand voices, utterly alone.
Chapter Two
Sashawaited on the fire escape.He could have stayed in the dressingroom, or anywhere else out of the way of theatrical traffic hechose.Laurie’s orders to security were always strict in thatregard, and Sasha found a welcome backstage and in the green roomsof whichever playhouse his lover was working.
Greatlyas he appreciated the privilege, once those theatres were no longerintimate studios and hundred-seater locals but vast bejewelledcaverns like the Queen’s—combination rabbit-warren and cruise shipunder full sail—Sasha preferred invisibility.On a warm city nightit was a pleasure to clamber up into the black wrought-iron forestof emergency stairs that filled the alley between the Queen’s andthe rival Marlowe that backed onto it.Like slipping between thespines of two great slumbering beasts...
He wasalmost at roof level.He’d used a drop ladder to get up here, whichhe supposed wasn’t becoming for a suited office worker with asatchel full of Council files, but the satchel had a strap he couldsling across his chest and shoulders to leave his hands free.WhenLaurie had wanted to buy him a briefcase, that was what Sasha hadasked for.One of Laurie’s myriad beauties was that Sasha never hadto explain to him such things—why free hands were important, why asecond-hand, scuffed leather satchel appealed more than a sleekattaché.
Sashasat watching the remains of a late summer sunset, just a glowinggreen-gold aura to the west, outshone from below by earthly lights.He could let his bone-marrow gently vibrate to the bass thudding upfrom the nightclubs on Soho Street, and pick up strands ofmultilingual chatter as they drifted to him on the updrafts.Aclash of ragged consonants caught his ear.Romani?He homed in onthe sound, picked out from the scatter of passersby on ShaftesburyAvenue a brightly dressed group, all of them dark-haired as he was,cheerful but watchful in the crowd.No—Hungarian, close enough totug at his roots, sufficiently different to leave themaching.
Roma orMagyar, illegal or of good status, the gaudy little group would nolonger recognise Sasha as one of their own.He’d done his best, inall his work for the IGC, to identify with his clients, not theestablishment.But he knew that on first sight, until he hadintroduced himself and spoken to whichever weary, hypothermic pieceof displaced humanity had just been dragged from a container shipat Dover, to them he was part of the problem, a brick in the wall.A suit and a tie on the far side of a desk.
The tiewas long gone.Vaguely Sasha wondered where he’d left it today.Laurie gently scolded him for the trail of them he left around thecity, but kept them coming—dove grey, charcoal, unassuming but oflovely make.Considering this, Sasha asked himself if he werebecoming more thoroughly assimilated than he’d known.The boy whohad lived hand-to-mouth on the streets of this glittering townwould never have left a tie behind, if he’d had a use for one.He’dhave hung on to every stitch on his back.
A burstof voices, vivid as sunflowers, startled him out of his thoughts.He looked down through the branches of his forest.The stage doorswere disgorging a lovely cascade, young men and women more gaudilydressed for their own lives than they had been for Shakespeare’s.Kenneth’s production had kept their costumes sober, underlining thecontradictions in the play between majesty and base cruelty,military heroism and domestic dirt.Released to their evening’sentertainment, the cast were resplendent in coloured faux furs,ground-trailing skirts, Desigual jackets patched all over withgold-threaded rags.Sasha smiled.All this boho chic must cost afortune, and from here they looked like a bunch of Roma gypsiesready to dance round the fire.
Alreadydancing.The fire in question was Laurie Fitzroy.They wereshifting about him as if in response to a gravitational force,jockeying for close position.Laurie, poised and quiet in a plainleather coat and jeans, hardly seemed aware of them.
Sasha didn’t wait for Laurie to miss him, to start to lookaround.After two years in a partnership, surrounded by other youngcouples, gay and straight, Sasha had begun to accept the behavioursdisplayed by some of their friends, the chances they took with oneanother.Tell me you love me in front ofyour friends.Fetch me a beer.If you really give a damn about me,you won’t go out tonight.These things hadastounded him at first.He wasn’t concerned whether or not the beerwould be fetched, the public declaration of passion made.Whatscared him was the risk.If you had someone, a lover to call yourown, why on earth would you challenge him, put him through suchtrivial tests?
It wasokay to understand such errors in others, not to commit themhimself.He made his way down the fire escape as quietly as he hadclimbed it.Silently he joined the periphery of thecrowd.
Lauriesaw him.A gap in his universe filled.He tuned out the static ofthe chatter around him and took his fix on Sasha’s beacon, signalcoming strongly through the noise.“Sash!Where the hell wereyou?”
“Communing with the pigeons.”Sasha wouldn’t test, but he wasglad enough to take Laurie’s outstretched hand when it was there,to be reeled in through the rabble.The older members of the casthad gone home to their beds, though Kenneth and Parolles werethere, oblivious to the generation gap and with bright eyes fixedon the main chance.Gem was sharing a joint with the virginal Dianaof Florence.The only missing face was that of Alison Jones,Laurie’s most devoted friend and follower from the Rayne’s.“Where’s Allie tonight?”
