In the close night I wake alone in bed but, across the dark, he is at his desk. Streetlight filleting the bones in his back. Cigarette, of course. So I get up and go put my arms around him. What are you doing, my love? Just thinking, he says And looking at this picture of my mother again. I can just about remember her looking like this. Who could’ve imagined what would come next? Or guessed the girl in this photograph would starve herself to death? Or that on hearing it all I’d be able to think of was how much I loved her when I was a little boy. In our quiet warm world we think on that. Then he drops the photo. Stubs out his cigarette. Says Come on, and takes me back to bed. We make ourselves comfortable in each other’s arms there, then go to sleep.
LAST DAY: Friday 21 July 1995
Strings of sunlight all through my hair as I make on up Haverstock Hill. Quick, for he almost has me late. Shit! Nearly ten! Run down Prince of Wales Road. Front steps bereft of the usual herd, all up on the balcony now. In I too and up the stairs. Just beginning, as I get there. Wedge myself in amid the costume rails. Poor fuckers, she whispers friendly-like and budging up. Hey Alison, yeah, I don’t envy them this. Everything resting on it. Get a job. Get an agent. What’s Danny doing? Miss Julie, I say. She rolls her eyes Of course he is, he doesn’t half fancy himself!
Straight after the run-through First Years disperse for the readying. My job’s a spot of foyer sweeping. Making sure the Spotlight pictures are neat. Telling Danny, as he wanders past Break a leg! and Me and Stephen are back together again! Good work, he says Any chance of asking his agent to keep an eye out for me?
Soon enough the afternoon showing begins. First and Second Years — banned from sound — cram ourselves into the canteen. Hear casting directors and agents come in. Glasses clink and Hello darling! Third Years cracking the side door open, waiting for their cues. Then disappearing off into the Church. Afterwards whispering That went well, or I fucked up, or I really can’t tell, suppose I’ll have to wait and see. But time goes round and soon he’ll come which makes me somewhat insensible to their suffering.
Tap polite claps through the door, then a hum up of standing. I go out into the loiter of Third Years waiting, making interesting, looking thin. Teachers sympathising or saying Well done. Hey Danny, happy? Reasonably, he says Just got to hope now I get a bite, but there’s someone waiting for you outside. So I follow on out to the brim of day. And leant against the pillar, there he is. Talking to some small man — or who by comparison, seems. The lightness still all about him, right through his long frame. Fag in his mouth. Loot under his arm. Saying No he is, I saw him last term and I’m actually thinking of getting him to read. Then he sees me Hey Eil! — taps the little man’s arm — Hang on a sec, this is her. And reaches through the mayhem for me. Been waiting long? Few minutes, he says So let me introduce you. This is my girlfriend Eily, this is my agent. Hello. Shake and Is that short for Eileen? Éilís, Stephen says Hey Danny, over here, there’s someone I want you to meet.
Fancy a walk Eil, before we head home? So we See you later, the others and off we go. He unfolds the Loot as we cross to Crogsland Road. I’m thinking it’s time to move. I’ll soon need the extra space, what with an office and a room for Grace and fancy moving in properly? My mother will probably kill me, I say But I don’t care so yes! Then stop to kiss on the kerb between the Enterprise and, now closed down, Fortune Village Chinese. Whereabouts do you fancy? Camden forever, I say. I thought you might say that, so how about this one then? Three bedrooms up off Delancey Street? Yeah that looks great. Okay, then I’ll give them a call, as we cross over the Chalk Farm Road. Up onto Regent’s Park Road. Across the bridge. Taking the heat of the afternoon on our heads. Arms around each other, we go past shops and the Russian tearoom on the right. All the way up to the phone boxes by the park gates. I’ll just nip in and make that call then, he says. I rock back on my heels as he does. Watch a plane passing over. The white it brings. A perfect sky cut but of this world, like me and him. In it. Ready now.