The Grand Scheme of Things, page 4
“You know I won’t,” Nick replied, sounding slightly stung, as if I wouldn’t put it past him. “There’s obviously no point in telling her anything that isn’t a success story. I know that just as much as you do.”
“I know. I know. I can just feel the tension sometimes. I come back from work and she’ll ask me how it was, and then she’ll ask me if I’m looking for other jobs, and I’ll respond with ‘work was fine’ and ‘yes, I am,’ and the cycle continues. I know she thinks I’m a huge disappointment.”
“Far from the truth, Naledi,” Nick responded. To this day, he’s one of the few people who has never called me by anything other than my real name. Every time he does, it’s like an existential anchor that drops me into a small crevice outside the multitudes of my identity. “You’re not a disappointment. Maybe to your own expectations, but nobody else’s.”
“Shut up. You’re nineteen. Stop being a wise man,” I responded, with the sudden urge to cry. Instead, I finished my drink.
“It’s true, though. I went to your final year showcase. It was sick, man. Something I ain’t ever seen before. It’s not a surprise you left with the highest grade.”
I wanted to say something cynical about how your final uni grades didn’t matter once you graduated, but then I remembered I was talking to a uni student. “I’m a theater kid at the end of the day,” I said instead. “I’m not a Canary Wharf briefcase wanker. I’m not a hashtag-girlboss-building-my-empire. Just a theater grad.”
“Negative Naledi.” Nick shook his head. “You’ve got something special. Everybody knows it. No matter what it takes, you’re gonna make it.”
He was right. Emphasis on the “no matter what it takes.” If anyone knows exactly what it took, it’s you, Hugo.
* * *
Come June, two responses peeked out of the small mound of rejections, which meant I had piqued some interest. However, after the first round of requests to send in the entire play, I was told by both agencies that my work was not quite what they were looking for.
I remember where I was when I got the second rejection email, taking a smoke break at work, heart sinking. My thumbs moved autonomously straight to Facebook so I could distract myself by doomscrolling through the endless cycle of Brexit news articles as the referendum crawled closer. I remember being stopped in my tracks, my jaw hanging open, at a headline I couldn’t believe was real: in broad daylight, Jo Cox, a Labour MP, had been shot with a modified hunting rifle, then stabbed to death, in West Yorkshire. Two days later, the terrorist told Westminster Magistrates’ Court, “My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain.” He was declared sane by a psychiatrist after his arrest.
I was at Blue’s house on the morning of the referendum. The margin between the opposing sides was so slim, it felt even more hopeless than if it had been a landslide victory. It was essentially fifty-fifty, but the Leave’s fifty was bigger. Democracy is supposed to be this precious thing, a hallmark of a thriving, functioning society, but what happens when the proletariat’s choices are funneled through the ideals of the ivory tower elite? What happens when the prime minister has too much faith in a world from which he is so far removed?
I couldn’t help but sink into my seat, as my heart sank into my stomach, Blue utilizing every swear word under the sun next to me, when I realized we were severing ourselves from the union we had built as a pact to stick together after the Second World War. I thought back to a conversation I had had with Sam, a coworker I despised with a passion, a few weeks earlier. He told me he had voted Leave, in his unmistakable Essex drawl, and when I asked him why, he told me it was because he didn’t want any more Arabs coming into the country. Instead of telling him that the last time I heard, Arabs weren’t from Europe, I told him that Molly, the effervescent blonde who only did weekend shifts, the same girl whose DMs he’d slid into on multiple occasions, was Syrian. All he could do was shrug. Now I sat staring dumbfounded and bitter at the television, and all I could see was Sam’s idiotic face, his fist probably in the air as he yelled, “Come on then!” like he was watching the football.
The pound plummeted that day. I remember people saying it was just the initial stock market reaction to the results, but I just thought to myself how amazing it was that we functioned under an economy tenuous enough to collapse because hundreds of thousands of Sams had ticked a box on a piece of paper.
* * *
I was still holding close to my chest my mini social experiment regarding my playwright moniker in July. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence, but a couple of weeks after the referendum, I received a response from the Wentworth Agency, which I’d submitted to under Edward Moore. They said they were very interested in the subject matter of the play and would love to read the rest, so I immediately sent it to them. I was at Blue’s house when I’d got the email, and she poured us glasses of red wine to celebrate the little beam of progress, of hope, in my creative journey. I’d been telling her about each inquiry rejection and acceptance—she’d been there with me every step of the way. The one thing I didn’t mention to her was the name change, as I was sure I’d get the same kind of response from her that I’d got from Lydia or Nick, but even more impassioned, even more demanding. She always had too much faith in me, Hugo. Too much faith to let me give my play away to an Edward Moore, a nonexistent abstraction, a reflection instead of a transgression of the world we lived in. If she knew what I’d done, she’d be so disappointed in me.
Seven days after I’d sent the entirety of The Worthy off to the Wentworth Agency, I received an email to arrange a meeting for the coming week. I’d been leaning on my bedroom windowsill with my head poking awkwardly out of my open window as I blew a puff of smoke as far out into the ether as I could muster. My mother was somewhere earning extra cash doing braids for a regular in Plumstead, and I took advantage of the empty house and my ever-increasing adolescent bravery to risk the smell of cigarette smoke permeating the flat. It was around five in the afternoon when I got the invitation, and I froze with elation. It’s really happening, I thought to myself. An agency wants to take on my work. Six grueling months later, my dreams are coming true!
* * *
I thought long and hard about what to wear on the day of the meeting. Did it matter if I looked as presentable as possible, dress suit and heels, red lips, heat-combed hair? Did it matter if I came as my usual self, standing in aged trainers and thrifted attire, zany jewelry from Brixton market, waist-length box braids bundled into a misshapen top bun, no makeup, septum piercing on show? I knew it didn’t make a damn difference what I wore. As far as they were concerned, they were negotiating a potential production deal with a man. After calling in sick to Byron Burgers, I hopped onto public transport and headed to the agency’s offices in Bloomsbury. As soon as I entered the building, my adrenaline started to kick in. I was all too aware of my brown skin, of my feminine form, of how I didn’t look like an Edward Moore at all. It wasn’t exactly a foolproof plan. Maybe in an alternate universe, in which I lived in a visually impaired society, I’d get away with it. But I guess if I wanted to get canonical with that line of thought, even in a blind world there’d be a way to separate the Naledis from the Edwards.
“It’s a pseudonym,” I told the puzzled receptionist, whose eyes were flitting back and forth between my face and the name on the sign-in sheet. “My playwright name.”
“I’m afraid I’d need some form of identification to verify that this is you, madam,” the woman responded pitifully.
“My name’s Eddie. Well, it’s Naledi. I can show you my license. I shortened it to Eddie, and that’s how I came up with Edward. It’s a bit of a stretch, I know. But it’s the truth.” I pulled out my ID in the hopes that it’d work, my heart stammering in my chest. Though I presented myself with a sturdy impatience, I was shitting a house of bricks.
The receptionist stared at it for a while, as if she was trying to put the pieces together. Then she frowned and looked up at me. “You’re here to see Helen Hunter, right?”
“Yes, and I’m going to be late to the meeting. Please, just let me in.”
“Let me just call up to her office. If she can verify your real name, then I can let you in.”
“Fuck,” I hissed quietly, but loud enough for her to hear. “Hold on. Don’t tell her my name. Tell her I’m here for The Worthy. That’s the name of my script.”
I could see the cogs whirring in the receptionist’s brain as she tried to figure out if Helen even knew my real identity, if it was worth inquiring any further. She picked up the phone on her desk and tentatively dialed the agent’s office. “Hi, sorry to bother you—you have a meeting with Edward Moore at half past one? There’s a woman in the lobby here. I’m not sure, but she’s claiming—yes, a woman. She’s claiming to be Edward. She said it’s a pseudonym. Hold on—” She moved the phone away briefly, covering the microphone with her hand. “What’s your play’s name again? Sorry.”
“The Worthy. That’s what I told you to say.”
“The… Worthy?” she repeated back into the phone. “Yes. Right. Okay, will do. Thanks, bye.” She hung the phone up in a quick clunk before straightening herself out. Handing me the sign-in sheet on a clipboard, she told me to write my name and the time I entered, then she handed me a guest lanyard to get through the turnstiles. I thanked her, hiding my exasperation and making my way to the elevators, to the tenth floor of the building that overlooked the city. I could probably swim in the sweat that had accumulated between my armpits. Once I found the door to Helen’s office, I took a deep breath, then knocked lightly. I heard her voice on the other side, beckoning me in with an authoritative pull.
* * *
The Wentworth Agency had been founded in the early nineties by Richard Wentworth, an esteemed playwright from Bristol who had struck gold in the West End a decade earlier. He wanted to curate a house of like-minded writers and artists, and boy did he do just that. By the time I put in my submission, it was one of the most fruitful agencies on the market, home to dozens of award-winning and award-nominated plays. For the last three years in a row, the winners of the Marston B. Greaves Awards for Theatre (the MBG Awards for short), the most prestigious competition for emerging theater hopefuls, had been swept into contracts at Wentworth. Richard had died suddenly of a heart attack in 2000, and in his honor, his agency was renamed after him (it had originally been called the Blue Swan Agency, an ode to one of his most successful plays, and in my opinion, a much more creative name). Helen Hunter was an assistant agent working there at the time of his death, and over time had climbed the rungs to become the most intimidatingly revered agent in Wentworth’s roster. She was known to be a no-nonsense curator of talent, and I wasn’t ready to fumble my chances with her.
I sensed the bemusement in the air the second I walked in. There sat Helen at her wide glass desk, and next to her was a man I didn’t recognize. The office was spectacularly modern and minimalist, brightly illuminated by daylight that poured through the floor-to-ceiling window ahead. There was so much glass everywhere. The transparency of the room made me feel like a prisoner in a literary panopticon.
“Hello. Edward?” Helen greeted me with caution, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Or did we get the timings mixed up?” She was leaning forwards over the desk, twiddling a pen between her thumb and forefinger. I looked down and saw what looked like the script for my play, a pile of paper. In between the pages was a rainbow of small sticky tabs. It dawned on me that I had made it in, my work was worth considering, all the way down to a detailed annotation. But judging from the body language of the agents, the gut feeling that I had maybe messed up was already forming, bubbling up inside of me.
“Edward’s my playwright name. Stage name, if you will.” I chuckled, ambling towards Helen as I held out my hand. She looked at it before pulling her own hand out and giving mine a firm shake. She never moved from her seat—I almost had to bend right over the table to reach her. “Lovely to meet you! This is so exciting.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” she said. “This is my assistant agent, Tony. He helps me sieve through submissions.”
“Nice to meet you, Tony,” I said, beaming, and the young man sprang from his seat to shake my hand.
“Pleasure’s all mine,” he replied, nodding with a pursed smile. You know, the classic white-people smile. I sat down in front of the pair, observing the gray sky behind them.
“This script… it’s wonderful, it really is. Hits the nail on the head, I think. Especially with what’s happening in our political climate at the moment,” Helen said, picking up the annotated script and straightening it out. I thought it was an odd thing to do, as the papers were already aligned. She put them back down and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Where did the inspiration for this come from? This idea of a cutthroat dystopia, indiscriminate in some ways, discriminate in others?”
“Well… it’s largely influenced by my own upbringing, actually. I’m a first-generation immigrant, and my parents divorced when I was young. My dad struggled to find work here, so he moved back. My mother chose to stay, so me and my brother could have access to better opportunities. But better opportunities, to me, is having a respectable career,” I said, noting their incessant subtle nods. “But what kind of career is deemed respectable? Usually something corporate, something white-collar. Where would an artist fit in a world like that? You know, I just had all these questions floating around in my head, so I found a way to conceptualize them.”
“Wow. Fascinating.” Helen nodded. “Where did you study again?”
“Kingston. Drama and creative writing. I graduated at the top of the class, by the way.” I chuckled. I realized that I was still sweating, probably more than I had been before. I didn’t get a breather between the stressful reception encounter and pitching myself to one of the most established agents in the country. I’d never wished for air-conditioning more than I did in that moment. “I have my playwriting CV in my bag, if you want to see more?”
“Hold that thought.” Helen shook her head. “This play sounds promising. I’m very interested in it. We’ll need to start looking into budgets, directors, producers, that sort of thing, but we can go into more detail at a later date. I tell you what, we’ll set up another meeting sometime this month, to iron everything out. I’m actually running late for something, so I can’t be too long today.”
“Oh, okay.” I nodded. “So is this just more of a preliminary meeting?”
“Something of the sort, yes. Just to get a clearer picture, and to put a face to the name.” Both Helen and Tony looked at each other, then at me. “Which reminds me, why the pen name? You don’t look like an Edward Moore to me.”
“I suppose that’s the point of pen names, no?”
“What’s your actual name?”
I paused, shifting in my seat. “Naledi. Naledi Moruakgomo. Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?” I let out an awful nervous wheeze laugh, and the feeling hit me like a ton of bricks, that embarrassment. I couldn’t tell if I was embarrassed about my name, or the fact that I’d omitted it, or both.
“It would have been lovely to know your real name during our correspondence, Naledi. You know—to get a real sense of where you’re coming from. I mean with the play, of course.”
“Is it that important?” I found myself saying. There was a defensive lilt to my tone I immediately regretted. I didn’t want to tell her that the furthest I’d got in my creative endeavors had been when I lied about myself.
“For the purpose of representation, it’s always important.” She smiled at me pityingly, as if she knew more about representation than I ever could. Smarmy bitch.
* * *
I left that meeting feeling out of place, as uncomfortable as putting on twisted tights. There was something about the way Helen and Tony had looked at me when I entered the room, like they had been Punk’d. There was something so condescending about Helen’s demeanor, though I did feel like she liked the play. I wouldn’t have got as far as I did if she didn’t. But the week following the meeting was the longest week of my life, and Blue had to practically pry the millionth cigarette out of my mouth. She didn’t understand that my fingers were either going to check my emails or grip onto Rizla tobacco tubes, and nothing in between. I was even a buzzkill in bed, losing my mojo every time Smarmy Helen’s face popped into my head as Blue and I tussled under the sheets. No matter how much Blue tried to reassure me that I was just looking at things negatively to protect myself, it would never suffice. She didn’t know the half of it.
Twelve days later, the Wentworth Agency contacted me. The email was short and sweet. They said that due to extenuating circumstances, they’d had to cut their production budget and sign on fewer playwrights than they had initially wished. They said The Worthy had promise, but might be too politically sensitive. I sat on my bed, sighing, closing my laptop. I was floating somewhere, in a space between the beginning and the end. It was all over for me; it had only just begun.
v Baby Blue
August 2016
Tanya Victoria Phan was born in St. Thomas’s Hospital on a bitter February morning in 1995. She was in distress during the first few days of her life; she was difficult to feed, her pulse was weak, and she spent most of her time sleeping. Her tiny heart would pound intensely, and her skin had a pallid blue hue to it. It was soon discovered that she had a congenital defect, truncus arteriosus, in which the heart was formed with only one valve instead of two. It meant that her lungs were being fed too much blood, and her body not enough, causing her heart to overcompensate. Her condition was monitored and regulated for a few months, and once it was deemed safe enough, she underwent corrective heart surgery, which was successful. In no time, there was rosiness in her cheeks, a light in her eyes, her appetite in full swing, and she was as vivacious as ever. From the moment she was born, her parents never called her Tanya. She was Baby Blue, the color of her deoxygenated skin and lips. Once she recovered, the name stuck. Even at school, since reception, she made sure that was how she was addressed. If anyone was to call her Tanya, I don’t think she’d even turn her head.
