‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘Is this it? Is this the call?’
‘Yeah, this is fucking it,’ he said. ‘Please. Come on.’
‘Do up my buttons,’ I said.
‘Christ. You. You stupid boy. OK. Come on. Pyke’s waiting for me.’
We hurried to the pub. I’d never seen Terry look so hopeful about anything before. I really wanted him to get the job.
Pyke was leaning against the bar with Marlene, sipping a half of lager. He didn’t look the drinking type. Three of our company went up to him and chatted briefly. Pyke replied, but barely seemed bothered to move his lips. Then Shadwell came into the pub, saw Pyke, nodded contemptuously at us, and left. Instead of going over to Pyke, Terry led me to a corner table among the old men who drank alone every night, and there he calmly sucked his roll-ups as we sipped our usual pint with a whisky chaser.
‘Pyke’s not showing much interest in you,’ I pointed out.
Terry was confident. ‘He’ll be over. He’s very cold – you know what middle-class people are like. No feelings. I reckon he wants my working-class experience to give his puerile political ideas some authenticity.’
‘Say no,’ I advised him.
‘I bloody might. Critics always say his work’s “austere” or “puritanical” because he likes bare naked stages and theatres with their brickwork sticking out all over the place and no props. As if my mum and the working class like that. They want comfortable seats, french windows and sweets.’
Just then Pyke turned towards us and raised his glass a fraction of an inch. Terry smiled back.
‘’Course, Pykie’s got his virtues. He’s not self-promoting like those other cunt directors and conductors and producers who just live off other people’s talent. He never does interviews and he never goes on telly. He’s good like that. But,’ said Terry darkly, leaning towards me, ‘this is something you should know, if you’re lucky enough to work with him one day.’
He told me that Pyke’s private life wasn’t a desert of austere and puritanical practices. If the inevitably deformed critics who admired his work – and the critics who sat with their faces pointing up at us did seem to have the countenances of gargoyles, while the aisles were crammed with their wheelchairs – knew of certain weaknesses – certain indulgences, let us say – they would see Pyke’s work in a different light. ‘Oh yes, a very different light.’
‘What kind of light?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘But, Terry, surely we hide nothing from each other?’
‘No, no, I can’t say. Sorry.’
Terry didn’t gossip. He believed that people were made by the impersonal forces of history, not by greed, malice and lust. And besides, Pyke was now walking straight towards us. Terry hurriedly stubbed out his roll-up, pushed his chair back and got up. His hand even went up to flatten his hair. He shook hands with Pyke. Then he introduced us to each other.
‘Nice to see you, Terry,’ Pyke said smoothly.
‘Yeah, and you, and you.’
‘You make an excellent snake.’
‘Thank you. But thank God someone’s doing some classy work in this crumby country, eh?’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘You, Matthew.’
‘Oh yes. Me.’
‘Yes.’
Pyke looked at me and smiled. ‘Come and have a drink at the bar, Karim.’
‘Me?’
‘Why not?’
‘OK. See you later, Terry,’ I said.
As I got up Terry looked at me as if I’d just announced I had a private income. He sank back into his chair as Pyke and I walked away from the table, and tossed the whisky down his throat.
As Pyke got me a half of bitter I stood there regarding the rows of inverted bottles behind the barman’s head, not looking at the other actors in the pub, who I knew were all staring at me. I meditated for a few seconds, concentrating on my breathing, immediately aware of how shallow it was. When we were set up with drinks, Pyke said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’
I hesitated. I looked at Marlene, who was standing behind us, talking to an actor. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Tell me something you think might interest me.’
And he looked at me with full concentration. I had no choice. I began to talk rapidly and at random. He said nothing. I went on. I thought: I am being psychoanalysed. I began to imagine that Pyke would understand everything I said. I was glad he was there; there were things it was necessary to say. So I told him things I’d never told anyone – how much I resented Dad for what he’d done to Mum, and how Mum had suffered, how painful the whole thing had been, though I was only now beginning to feel it.
The other actors, who were now gathered around Terry’s table with jars of yellow beer in front of them, had turned their chairs around to watch me, as if I were a football match. They must have been amazed and resentful that Pyke wanted to listen to me, of all people, someone who was barely an actor. When I faltered as the realization hit me that it wasn’t Mum who’d neglected me, but I who’d neglected Mum, Pyke said gently, ‘I think you may like to be in my next production.’
I woke from my introspective dream and said, ‘What kind of show will it be?’
I noticed that when Pyke was about to talk he put his head thoughtfully to one side and looked away into the distance. He used his hands flirtatiously, slowly, not flapping or pointing but caressing and floating, as if wiping his flat hand inches from the surface of a painting. He said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘What kind of part will it be?’
He shook his head regretfully.
‘I’m afraid I can’t begin to say.’
‘How many people will be in it?’
There was a long pause. His hand, with the fingers splayed and taut, waved in front of his face.
‘Don’t ask me.’
‘D’you know what you’re doing?’ I asked, more bravely.
‘No.’
‘Well, I don’t know if I want to work in that vague kind of way. I’m inexperienced, you know.’
Pyke conceded. ‘I think it may revolve around the only subject there is in England.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes.’
He looked at me as if I were sure of what this was.
‘Class,’ he said. ‘Is that OK for you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
He touched me on the shoulder. ‘Good. Thank you for joining us.’ It was as if I were doing him a big favour.
I finished my drink, quickly said goodbye to the other actors and got out as fast as I could, not wanting to register their smirks and curiosity. I was walking across the car park when someone jumped on my back. It was Terry.
‘Leave it out,’ I said sternly, pushing him off.
‘Oh yeah.’
There were no laughs in his face. He looked very low. He made me feel ashamed of my sudden happiness. I walked to the bus stop in silence with him beside me. It was cold, dark and raining.
‘Has Pyke offered you a part?’ he said at last.
‘Yes.’
‘Liar!’
I said nothing. ‘Liar!’ he said. I knew he was so incensed he couldn’t control himself; I couldn’t blame him for the fury which inhabited him. ‘It can’t be true, it can’t be true,’ he said.
Suddenly I shouted out into the night air. ‘Yes, yes, yes, it is true!’ And now the world had some tension in it; now it twanged and vibrated with meaning and possibility! ‘Yes, yes, fucking yes!’
When I got to the theatre next day someone had laid a dirty red carpet from the dressing-room door to the spot where I normally changed. ‘Can I help you off with your clothes?’ one actor said. ‘Can I have your autograph?’ said another. I received daffodils, roses and an acting primer. The EST freak, Boyd, said, as he took off his trousers and shook his penis at me, ‘If I weren’t white and middle class I’d have been in Pyke’s show now. Obviously mere talent gets you nowhere these days. Only the disadvantaged are going to succeed in seventies’ England.’
For a few days I was too cowardly to tell Shadwell of Pyke’s offer, and that I was not going to do the Molière. I was happy and didn’t want the pleasure of anticipation soured by a row with him. So Shitvolumes started preparing his next show as if I were going to be in it, until one day, just before The Jungle Book was about to go up, he came into the dressing room.