Autumn in Sycamore Park, page 10
‘I hope all your classes are progressing well with your preparation for the harvest festival,’ Downton said. ‘It doesn’t look like it’s going to be cancelled, more’s the pity. I got a memo from the council this morning that said they’ve stayed the execution on that dangerous old tree until at least the end of October.’
‘Woo hoo!’ Amy shouted, jumping out of her seat and knocking a box of pencils onto the floor.
‘Calm down, Ms. Clairmont,’ Downton said. ‘Keep your activism at home, and preferably in a closet. The next thing I know you lot will want vegan school dinners. We’re raising children, not cattle.’
‘Wouldn’t know it from some of mine,’ Amy quipped under her breath to Jennifer, who gave her a reassuring smile.
‘And then there’s this horror circus of a teachers’ drama,’ Downton said. ‘I trust everything is progressing smoothly?’
‘We’re all still alive,’ Rick said. ‘For now.’
‘That’s good news. I’d hate to be hiring new staff so close to the festival. Does anyone have anything they would like to add?’
Maud, sitting at a corner desk just for the meeting, raised her hand. ‘We’re going over budget on the copier,’ she said. ‘Please keep your copies to black and white only.’
‘And work related,’ Downton added. ‘Right, anyone else? No? Okay, get on with it.’
As teachers began to file out, Rick glanced at Jennifer and Amy, then took a last tug on his Starbucks. ‘All right, off I go. Wish me luck with the devils. I’ll need it.’
‘Good luck!’ Amy squawked, a little too loudly, gaining an awkward glance from Rick and a glare from Mrs Davis sitting on Amy’s other side.
As Rick headed out, Jennifer leaned over his desk and took the plastic lid off his Starbucks coffee disposable cup.
‘I knew it, she said, holding up a PG Tips teabag. He’s trolling us.’
For once, her class survived until lunch without any major dramas. While not yet feeling exactly comfortable, Jennifer definitely felt that she was starting to get the hang of managing them, and even though at times she still felt like the invisible woman Mark had created, other times—such as when she had to step in to prevent a fight over a tub of green poster paint between two boys—she felt more real than she had in a long time.
She was still a work in progress, but Angela’s words echoed in her head.
As the bell rang for lunch and the kids put away their art supplies, Gavin Gordon approached he desk.
‘Miss? Can I talk to you?’
‘Sure.’
He waited until the rest of the kids had headed either to the dining hall or the playground before giving a little cough.
‘Miss … I’ve decided who I want to be on my management team for the festival.’
‘Yes?’
Gavin’s cheeks reddened. ‘First, Paul—’
‘Paul Lemon? Is that wise?’
‘He’s strong. He can carry stuff.’
‘Well, okay.’
‘And you said there had to be at least one girl. So, uh, Kel and Bec.’
His cheeks were so red now Jennifer could have plucked them from a vine and put them up for sale in Tesco.
‘Okay … have you asked them about this?’
‘They said whatever.’
‘Which means yes?’
Gavin shrugged. Jennifer figured she would just have to assume that a positive response had been returned unless told otherwise.
‘And one more … because you said five. Uh … Matt.’
‘Excuse me? You mean Matt Bridges?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The boy you’ve picked on since—by all accounts—the first year?’
Gavin’s head shot up. ‘I don’t pick on him!’
‘That’s not what literally every child or teacher has ever told me, Gavin. If you’re hoping this will give you a chance to bully him, I won’t stand for it.’
Gavin gave a frantic shake of his head. ‘No, it’s not like that. It’s … well, he has neat handwriting. He can do the price labels. And he’s good at maths. He can do all the adding up and looking after the money.’
Jennifer smiled. ‘I suppose that makes sense. Have you asked him yet?’
‘Not yet. Maybe after lunch.’
‘Well, you’d better hurry up about it. We don’t have much time.’
‘I know.’
As Gavin turned to head off for lunch, Jennifer cleared her throat. ‘Ah, Gavin?’
‘Yes, Miss?’
She smiled. ‘Those are good choices. I think they’ll make a good team.’
Gavin looked at the ground but didn’t smile. ‘Thanks, Miss.’
‘How’s your mum?’
Gavin shrugged. ‘She’s okay.’
‘That’s good. Go on, you’d better hurry up. You’re missing playtime.’
‘Right, are we ready?’
Amy, holding her script out in front of her like a priest about to begin a sermon, looked around the assembled group. Some shrugged, some grunted in agreement. Old Don sighed. Jennifer, standing to Amy’s left, glanced at Rick, who was already making gestures in the air like a silent movie thespian, a look of total concentration on his face.
‘Okay, final read through, then we’ll do it with actions. Oh, I’m so excited!’
‘Fire had engulfed the land,’ Jennifer began, trying to sound dramatic in her role as part narrator, part minstrel. ‘The war against the dragons had continued for all eternity. From the ashes of the country rose one man who could end the war forever. His name was … Sir Brent.’
Rick sniggered.
‘Can you make it sound a little more … hopeless?’ Amy said.
‘I’m trying.’
‘Lass’s first time to act,’ Colin Tiller said with a chuckle.
Jennifer cleared her throat. ‘Fire had engulfed the land—’
‘Try putting the stress on “engulfed”,’ Old Don Jones said. ‘And hurry up about it. Lord Brent will have died of old age before he even gets out on his quest.’
‘Sir Brent,’ Collin Tiller said.
‘Are you starting on me, you pompous old—’
‘It’s Sir Brent,’ Rick said.
Amy gave a frantic clap of her hands. ‘Let’s start over again. From the top….’
At six o’clock, it came down to a vote whether to have one more run through, or call it a night. Amy enthusiastically voted yes, with Jennifer offering half an arm as moral support. The rest of the teachers were done, though, so time was called and they all headed home.
Jennifer, her throat aching from a day of shouting at the kids followed by practice of the newly inaugurated school song, and then drama practice, grabbed some takeaway food on the way home, ate it on the sofa before mustering a last gasp of energy to take Bonky out for a walk.
It was a beautiful late September evening. Warm with a light breeze blowing through the trees, the sun leaving mottles of shadow across the paths. A few scatterings of leaves had already fallen, others were just beginning to change colour. Jennifer felt her stress draining away as she watched Bonky racing across the grass, vainly in pursuit of the pigeons hunting for seeds.
Angela was right. She had to look forward instead of back. Refusing to think about Mark or the past she had left behind, she tried to focus on the upcoming festival. It would surely pass without a hitch, but it surprised her how nervous she felt, particularly about the teachers’ drama. It was hardly a showpiece, with the audience likely to be a handful of disinterested mums and dads and a few pupils hoping their teachers slipped up. Even so, she hadn’t done any acting since school, and the thought of any audience whatsoever was terrifying.
She was just wondering whether it might be best to slug a quick glass of wine before going on, when she noticed a line of people heading into the theatre. She wandered over with Bonky and found that a new play had just opened, a local group performing a musical version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
The evening show was due to start in half an hour. Not really giving herself time to think, Jennifer scooped Bonky up under her arm and jogged home, threw on some slightly more appropriate clothing and then dashed back to the theatre. As she headed in through the ticket gate, paid her five pounds for a stalls ticket, she hoped the server in the box office wouldn’t notice the sweat beading along her brow. She made a quick toilet stop then found her seat, thankfully with a few spaces on either side of the sparsely populated theatre.
Like every British school kid who could actually read, she had absentmindedly studied some Shakespeare at school, but had largely forgotten it in the intervening years. Thankfully, this seemed to be a watered down and reworked version, as the first characters came out speaking in language that it was possible to understand, before breaking into song against a recorded background tape.
While not exactly the West End, Jennifer felt a little inspiration as she watched the way the characters walked around the stage, how they stood, how they gestured, and how they performed their lines. It was clearly an amateur group by the sparseness of the stage backs and costumes, but they performed with no little skill. She found herself nodding along to the first song, and had a smile on her face when a trumpet sound blew, and to a round of applause the main character came on stage.
He marched to the middle, spread his arms, and announced himself as Macbeth, future king of Scotland. Jennifer stared openmouthed. As the actor gave a cackling laugh for effect, she tried to shrink down in her seat, aware that all he had to do was look down to see her.
As the applause ended, his eyes scanned across the audience. Jennifer gave an embarrassed smile as Tom, dressed in a frilly shirt, black trousers and boots, with a toy sword hung at his hip, gave a double take as he spotted her, and nearly missed a step. Quickly hiding a look of surprise, he managed to recover his composure with professional grace and deliver his next line. As soon as another character took centre stage, he glanced back at Jennifer, flashed a smile and winked.
A couple of minutes later, he broke into a song. Jennifer watched in awe of Tom’s stage presence, note perfect singing voice, and mastery of his lines. She quickly got over the shock of seeing him as an actor and found herself drawn into the story, a modified version of the original tragedy featuring a lot more humour, a scattering of borderline cheesy songs, and a couple of cool battle scenes.
And Tom, the gardener who raked leaves and caught injured ducks for a living, became something else entirely. On stage he looked a natural, head and shoulders above the rest of the group, as though he had spent years working in theatre and knew all the tricks. Each time he took centre stage for a speech or a song, Jennifer found herself unable to look away.
At the end, instead of being murdered in the final battle, Macbeth dressed in drag and fled off into the night, intent on becoming a mummer in a travelling circus while biding his time to return to Scotland and take his revenge. The players lined up and took a bow to a standing ovation, Tom again flashing Jennifer a quick smile. Then the curtains came across, and the lights went up.
People began getting up and shuffling out. Only a couple of hundred spectators had been present to witness Tom’s masterclass, but with daily showings for the next two weeks, Jennifer planned to return, perhaps with Angela or Amy. She waited for a couple of minutes, hoping Tom might come out, but the curtains stayed closed. Reluctantly, she headed for the exit.
Night had fallen during the performance, and Jennifer realised she had forgotten to bring any kind of jacket. Most of the other spectators were heading out of the doors and around to a car park in Sycamore Park’s northwest corner, but she was faced with a slightly nervy walk along the tree-lined paths to the southern entrance. She was about to take her chances when a familiar voice hailed her.
She turned to see Tom striding across the lobby. He looked totally different from the man she knew as the park’s caretaker, in black trousers and freshly polished shoes, his unkempt hair pressed beneath a thin-brimmed hat that was almost dapper. He wore a smart casual jacket and had a big grin on his face.
‘Jennifer. Glad I caught you. Thanks for coming.’
She stared at him, unable to speak, giving just a brief nod of acknowledgement.
Tom spread his arms. ‘What did you think? I fluffed a couple of lines, but it’s an adapted version so I don’t think anyone will have noticed.’
Jennifer swallowed. ‘I didn’t know you acted,’ she said.
Tom smiled. ‘It’s only local. A bit of a hobby these days.’
‘These days?’
He shrugged. ‘I had a few small roles going back a while.’
‘Small roles?’
‘Some TV work. A bit of West End. I got tired of the industry, which is why I do what I do now.’
Jennifer started to say, ‘A bit of West End?’ but realised she was beginning to sound like a parrot so clamped her mouth shut. ‘Oh,’ was all she could bring herself to say. ‘That’s nice.’
Tom smiled, and Jennifer felt her starstruck heart melting. ‘I didn’t know you were into Shakespeare,’ he said.
‘Neither did I until now. I just came along to get some inspiration for the teachers’ play.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’m a minstrel.’
‘Well, if you like, I could stop by to one of your rehearsals sometime to give you a few tips. If you think anyone would be interested … I don’t want to intrude, but I’m happy to help.’
Jennifer nodded. ‘I think that would be great. Amy wants us to put the Royal Shakespeare Company to shame, but I don’t think we’re going to pull that off. If we manage not to embarrass ourselves I’ll be happy enough.’
Tom smiled. ‘Sure. Just let me know a date and I’ll check my schedule. First, let me drive you home. It’s dark and getting chilly. I can’t have you walking home.’
‘Drive?’
‘Yeah.’ Tom lifted an eyebrow. ‘I have a car, you know.’
‘So you don’t….’
His face shone with amusement. ‘Live in that shack? Er, no. That’s just a shed. I have a place across town. You didn’t really think I lived there, did you?’
Jennifer gave a shy smile and shook her head, wondering how red it was possible to turn. She muttered an acceptance to the offer of a lift just to get away from the glaring lights in the theatre lobby as quickly as she possibly could.
Tom led her through the car park to a shiny Toyota that looked just a couple of years old. With another smile, Tom opened the passenger door for her, but it took Jennifer a couple of seconds to get her legs to move.
‘Uh, thanks.’
‘This is my car,’ Tom said with a chuckle. ‘I didn’t steal it.’
‘I know. I’m just struggling with this.’
‘Being the park caretaker isn’t my only job,’ Tom said. ‘In fact, it’s more of a hobby than anything else. I like being out in the open air. I do a couple of other things that mostly involve sitting at a computer. Some voiceover work, stuff like that. Just to pay the rent.’
Jennifer got into the car. Tom climbed in and they set off. A couple of minutes later, they pulled up outside Jennifer’s building on Willis Lane.
‘Ah, thanks,’ Jennifer said, opening the door. Still feeling starstruck, she said, ‘I’d, uh, invite you up but you know, the cat and the dog might get jealous.’
Tom laughed. ‘And this is a double yellow. Thanks again for coming to the show, Jennifer. It made my night seeing you in the audience. See you around?’
She nodded. ‘For sure.’
A light patter of rain had begun to fall. Jennifer climbed out, shut the door, and retreated to her building’s porch, from where she waved to Tom and watched him drive away. As his rear brake lights flashed and then he turned out of sight, she tried to suppress the butterflies making a stage musical of their own in her stomach.
17
Dashed Dreams
‘You didn’t tell me Tom was an actor,’ Jennifer said to Angela, trying not to sound too admonishing.
Angela chuckled around a mouthful of quiche. She patted her lips with a handkerchief and shook her head. ‘Is he?’
‘You know he is.’
‘Well, I knew he dabbled.’
‘He does a lot more than dabble. I looked him up on the internet. He’s been in tons of stuff. He’s practically Brentwell’s most famous son. I’m surprised he hasn’t been given the keys to the city or whatever.’
‘It doesn’t have any gates.’
‘Well, if it did….’
Angela continued to chuckle. ‘Does it make a difference? About whether you like him or not?’
‘That he’s been in something like thirty TV shows, and spent three years playing the second lead in Les Misérables in the West End? Of course it does.’
‘Ah, but he’s technically retired. He told me he only joined the cast of Macbeth: Revisited for something to do during the evenings. He’s not on TV anymore.’
‘So you do know that he’s an actor?’
Angela just shrugged. ‘It might have come up in conversation from time to time. I never really felt it relevant to mention.’
‘I’m not on a job interview!’
‘Calm down. Following the same principles, I’ve not, for example, told Tom that you abandoned your ex while he was away on a golfing weekend in order to make a new life for yourself here in Brentwell. I didn’t feel that was relevant. I did mention that you always pick the hazelnuts out of pies and that you get a little talkative after the third glass of wine. Such things I felt of high relevance, should you two ever make it as far as a date.’
Jennifer grimaced. ‘Point taken. Wait a minute. Date? Are you trying to set me up?’
‘Oh, no. I really don’t have the energy for that. I’m merely offering you a little guidance here and there, attempting to steer you in the right direction, so to speak.’
‘I’m not interested in Tom.’
‘I thought you just said you were.’
‘I meant … as a person. He pretends to be a park caretaker but he’s actually one of Britain’s most respected method actors, just hiding out here in Sycamore Park.’
