“I guess that’s a risk we’re going to have to take, then,” he said.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Head of Improvisation approaching.
“I have to go and finish my walk now,” he said. “But I’ll wait for you under the ginkgo tree.”
“I finish at five,” Isolde said.
“I know,” Stanley said. “I’ve been watching.”
“You have to follow through with the action to the very end,” the Head of Movement called out crossly. His tired hand was smoothing the hair on his crown, over and over. “Right now it’s obvious that you both know the scene is about to end, and you relax before the lights go down. It’s only a split-second thing, but it matters. You have to give the illusion that the scene is going to keep going on, behind the curtain. You have to follow through with the action to the very end. Again.”
Stanley and the girl again assumed their position, Stanley standing with his palm cupped against the girl’s cheek and his index finger slipped inside the tight little bud of her ear. They said their lines again, and tried not to loosen or slacken their bodies as the scene came to its invisible end.
“It is what I want. This is what I want,” was Stanley’s last line, and he gave her jaw a tight little shake with the clutch of his hand, for emphasis. The girl looked up at him. The scene ended.
Stanley’s face was close to hers and her cheek was in his hand. He followed the action through: he leaned down and kissed her like he meant it.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” the Head of Movement exploded, and the two of them jumped hastily apart. “When did I say kiss her? I said, Follow through with the action to the very end.”
“I thought that was what you meant,” Stanley said, with hot embarrassment, looking out past the lights. The girl wiped her mouth and looked at the floor.
“We are not going to have the curtain come down on the two of you pashing like a couple of kids!” the Head of Movement shouted. “Think about the scene, man!”
The Head of Movement did not usually yell. He was generally less vicious than the Head of Acting, less inclined to shame or fracture his students, less given to little bursts of irritation or cold contempt. But today he was scratchy, surly and tight chested as if short of breath, and as he glared up at the pair of them from his seat in the stalls he was smothered by a vast glove of anger and blame.
“What is it?” he said. “Just leaped at the opportunity, I suppose? What?”
The boy had a wounded look. He had been expecting congratulations, probably, praise for his physical commitment to the scene, his willingness to put personal considerations aside in the name of his art; he had been shamed, moreover, and shamed in front of a girl. The Head of Movement might well have destroyed all possibility of a relationship between the pair by this public shaming that caused them to flush and leap apart. The tutor knew it, and didn’t care. He was suddenly immensely irritated at them both, the boy with his fair lashes and vulnerable pout, the girl with her practiced look of nervous naïveté, worn thin.
“I just thought that’s what you meant,” Stanley said again. “Sorry.”
The Head of Movement did not speak for a moment. They were looking at him with faint pity now, he thought, as any teenager looks at an adult they believe to be utterly incapable of lust. They were looking at him as if they believed their awkward dry fumble against the fold of the curtain had somehow made him jealous; as if their collision had made him yearn for some lost youthful spontaneity of touch, and his outburst had only marked his dissatisfaction, his recognition of his own immeasurable loss. The Head of Movement felt disgusted. He wanted to turn his head and spit on the floor. He wanted to mount the seven steps to the stage and tear them from their cocoon of self-absorption and conceit. He wanted to shout and make them see that he was not jealous, that he could not be jealous of any pathetic hot-light kiss between two ill-made brats, and if anything what he felt was a profound nausea at what he had been forced to watch.
“Again,” said the Head of Movement sourly, and threw himself back into his chair.
Stanley was waiting for Isolde under the ginkgo tree when she emerged from her lesson, trotting down the sunken stone steps and across the courtyard to embrace him and kiss him briefly on the mouth.
“Look at you, you little gypsy,” Stanley said as he stepped back. “All your bags and everything.”
“Fridays are horrible,” Isolde said. “Sax and PE and art all in the same afternoon.”
“Gypsy girl.”
Isolde exhaled and flapped her arms and then grinned at Stanley, a broad, honest grin that lit her up completely. It was the same unashamed openness that had lured Mr. Saladin to Victoria, only it was transplanted here on to her sister, the same smile on a different face. Stanley leaned forward and kissed her on the nose.
“So when am I going to hear you play?” he said.
“I thought you could hear from down here in the quad.”
“But I’m never sure which sax is you and which is your teacher,” Stanley said with a grin. “I might be thinking you’re much better than you actually are.”
“Our saxes actually have really different voices,” Isolde said. “If you know to listen for that sort of thing. My mouthpiece is vulcanized rubber and hers is metal. The metal piece makes a really different sound.”
“Like how speaking voices are different from each other.”
“Yeah,” Isolde said. “Right. Like the difference between a woman and a girl.”
The stone building behind them was now unlit, all the curtains pulled and the lights doused. Inside, the offices were locked for the night and cooling now in the gathering dusk. On the attic level the saxophone teacher’s window was dark, as if she had locked the studio after Isolde’s departure and departed herself for the night, but if you looked up through the ginkgo branches you would see an inky figure standing by the curtain and looking down into the courtyard at the pair standing together under the ginkgo tree. Stanley and Isolde did not look up. Stanley crushed Isolde in a one-arm hug and together they walked away, talking quietly with their heads together, until they were swallowed by the cloisters and the branches, and they disappeared.
“Do you know why you are here?” the Head of Movement said as Stanley sat down.
“Probably my Outing,” Stanley said, hazarding a guess.
The Head of Movement raised his eyebrows and twitched up his chin sharply. “Your Outing?” he said.
“I must have failed the exercise,” Stanley said, suddenly realizing that he should be cautious, and trying to look a little more innocent and perplexed.
“I don’t think so,” the Head of Movement said. “I have your report from the Head of Improvisation and she said she was very much impressed. You were Joe Pitt.”
“Yeah,” Stanley said.
“I believe her report was very admiring.”
“Oh.”
Stanley tried to shrug and smile, but all he managed was a shiver and a grimace.
“Were you expecting to fail?” the Head of Movement asked, peering at him closely.
“No,” Stanley said quickly. “So I guess I don’t know why I’m here.”
The Head of Movement sat back and placed the palms of his hands on the desk before him. He was wearing a long-practiced look of grave disappointment, and Stanley’s heart began to hammer. The Head of Movement said, “Somebody has complained about you. Somebody has laid a very serious complaint about you. Do you know what that might be?”
Stanley looked bewildered. “No,” he said. “Who? What was it?”
The Head of Movement did not speak immediately. He looked at Stanley with something between pity and disgust, and Stanley felt himself shrivel.