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  “Oi, you’d better not be thinking of cancelling it. I’ve been sweating blood over that forest scenery.” Con had got involved with the Sham-Drams fairly early on when he came to live in the village. He liked the challenge of doing the scenery and some of the props—it was a bit more creative than his usual run of work.

  Sean laughed. “Literally? Cos I reckon that’d be a whole other play.”

  Con grinned. “Yeah. Lord of the Flies or something. Or what’s that Shakespeare one you were telling us about, Hev? The one where everyone gets hacked to pieces?”

  Heather flapped a hand in a don’t change the subject sort of way. “Titus Andronicus. So go on,” she insisted, leaning forward. “Do you think he’d be up for it?”

  “Well…” Con took a swallow from his pint. “He must be staying a few weeks at least. He wants to fix the house up—s’pose he’s planning to sell it, after. And yeah, I can imagine him doing Shakespeare. He likes big words.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  Small and dark and gorgeous. What Gran used to call fey. And yeah, like he was going to tell his mates that. “Uh… Short. Ish.”

  “That’s anyone compared to you.”

  “And he’s, uh, got dark hair. Sort of curly.” Con caught her looking at him and shrugged, feeling a bit on the spot. “That’s it, really.”

  “Is he good-looking?”

  Con swallowed, wishing he’d never mentioned the bloke. “Uh, yeah? Maybe?”

  Heather looked like she’d won the lottery. “Oh my God, he fancies him!”

  “I bloody don’t.” Con’s face was getting hot again, which only made him more annoyed. “He’s a git, all right? Total poseur.”

  “Yeah? To hear Mrs. Geary talk, you’d think the sun shone out of his solid gold bum. Well, we don’t have to like him. Just recruit him.” She gave Con a sly look. “Course, you’d be perfect for a rude mechanical.”

  “Yeah, well, you know that’s not gonna happen. I don’t do acting, all right?”

  Heather gave him a challenging look. “Have you ever tried it? Seriously. You might like it. Bottom’s a great part—he gets the laughs and the girl.”

  Sean laughed at that bit. “Don’t reckon the last one’s much of a selling point for Con, right, mate?”

  Heather carried on like she hadn’t heard him. “And if we could put you on a poster, we might get a few more young people joining the society.”

  “Leave it out,” Con muttered. He never felt comfortable when she went on about his looks. So he was tall, and his job had given him a few muscles? He wasn’t anything special.

  Sean leaned forward. “Leave him alone, Hev. You know it’s not his fault he can’t do it.”

  Which wasn’t exactly good for Con’s ego, even if he knew Sean meant well.

  Heather frowned. “Don’t gang up on me. And that’s crap, anyway. There’s loads of professional actors who’re dyslexic. Orlando Bloom, Tom Cruise, Keira Knightley… I’m just saying, it doesn’t mean he can’t learn lines.”

  Con stood up. He was fed up with this. “He’ll just let you two sort it out between you, all right? Let me know when you’ve decided if I’ll ever make it as a useful member of society, yeah?”

  “Oi, mate, sit down. We didn’t mean…”

  “Sorry, Con,” Heather said, looking like she meant it.

  Con sat down. He sighed. “I just… Look, I’m not saying the dyslexia’s got nothing to do with it, all right? But I just don’t fancy the idea of getting up on stage in front of everyone. Scenery, that’s my thing. Anyway, how come you’re not hassling Sean about having a go?”

  “Oi, don’t look at me!” Sean backed his stool off a couple of inches.

  Heather rolled her eyes. “Sean’s not a member. You are,” she said, like that justified it all somehow. Con was pretty sure he wouldn’t have signed up to do the scenery if they’d mentioned upfront they’d be press-ganging him into anything else they felt like. “Look, if you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. Just see if you can get this Tristan to come along tomorrow night to rehearsals.”

  Con stared. “Me? Why’ve I got to do it?”

  “Because you know him.” The way she smiled was worrying. “And if he’s gay, he almost certainly fancies you, so it’ll be a piece of piss for you to get him to do what you want, won’t it?”

  Oh God.

  He was never going to get away from Tristan bloody Goldsmith.

  Chapter Three

  Stark Mad

  Some time after Con had made his stormy exit, and possibly after around a gallon of Nanna Geary’s soothing nettle tea, Tristan checked his watch. It was four o’clock now, so that meant it’d be midnight in Hong Kong. Possibly a little late to call Amanda, but at least she’d probably be in. He opened up his laptop and clicked onto Skype.

  Amanda answered immediately, so she’d probably been playing some inane game on Facebook. Or watching gay porn—it was always a bit of a toss-up between those two, for her. She’d taken the same MA course in Classical Acting Tristan had, and had been an absolute lifeline for him.

  He’d somehow managed to rub his fellow students up the wrong way—perhaps it had been because he’d taken his first degree in English, rather than drama like the rest of them, and some of them felt he didn’t belong on the course? Then there had been the unfortunate incident in their first term. Tristan still maintained it could have happened to anyone—the tutor involved had been a very attractive man, and surely nobody censored their speech while in the heady grip of post-orgasm endorphins? He hadn’t meant to get anyone thrown off the course, and how was he to know the classmate he’d been babbling on about had lied on their application?

  At any rate, Amanda had been pretty much the only one who’d stuck with him after that.

  She’d followed him into a job with the Players afterwards—eventually—and had left at the same time as he did, although her descent into wage-slavery had of necessity been rather swifter. Actually, she’d probably been rather more influential than Father in finally persuading him to hang up his greasepaint. For some reason, she’d seemed a bit disillusioned by the life of a professional actor.

  “How’s Hong Kong, darling?” he asked as her familiar, heart-shaped face hove jerkily into view. She was in bed, he decided, with her laptop actually on her lap—from this angle, she seemed all chin and nose, with two tiny un-made-up eyes squinting at him from above.

  “An absolute bloody nightmare. God, the humidity. My straighteners burned out last night, so now I’m having to walk around looking like a dandelion stuck in an electric socket.” Actually, her dark chestnut hair seemed perfectly sleek to Tristan. “And I hardly get a minute to myself. It’s all right for you. Some of us have to work for a living.”

  “I’ll be joining the ranks of the gainfully employed soon enough, thank you.”

  “And in the meantime, spending three months lolling about by Daddy’s pool. As I said, it’s all right for some.”

  “Actually, I’m not at home right now. You remember I told you about Nanna Geary?”

  “Vaguely. Your old nanny, isn’t that right? Older than Moses, keeps sending you those horrid scarves for Hannukah? Oh—she died, didn’t she?” Amanda paused. “Sorry.”

  “She was Mother’s nanny first, actually. She was more a sort of honorary grandmother to me. We used to sit and do jigsaw puzzles together, and she’d make boiled sweets and fudge in a vast pan in the kitchen.” Tristan smiled at the memory.

  “God, it sounds practically medieval. Only less interesting.”

  Tristan frowned, a little hurt. “Anyway, she’s left me her house. I’m there right now. In Shamwell. I went down to look at the house, clear it out a bit—”

  “Why on earth don’t you just pay someone to do that?”

  “—and I think I’m going to spend the summer here.”

 
“You? You won’t last a week out there in the sticks. You’ll die of boredom. Become an unshaven slob. Start talking to yourself.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, darling. Shakespeare loved a good soliloquy. And anyway, there are all sorts of things to do in the countryside. Par example, I could get an allotment and start growing cannabis.”

  “Don’t expect me to visit you in prison.”

  “You’d let me pick oakum in solitude? Heartless creature. Anyway, I think I’ve found something to make the time go a little faster.”

  “Oh?” Amanda’s tone turned arch. “Let me guess: tall, blond and hung like a stallion?”

  “He has dark hair, actually, but one can’t have everything. And I’ll have to let you know about the stallion part, but initial observations are promising. Not over-burdened with intellect—or charm, for that matter—but he’ll do for a distraction until October.”

  She laughed. “Now who’s heartless?”

  There was no disapproval in her tone, nor had Tristan expected any, so he was rather disconcerted to find himself justifying his proposed course of action. After all, it was quite clear Con could do with taking down a peg or two, what with his essay me specific and his obvious, innit? and his demands Tristan make a bloody appointment every time he needed some work done. “Darling, I’m doing him a favour. It’ll be something for him to look back on during those long winter nights. After all, in a place like this, how many opportunities for dalliance can there be?”

  “In a place like that, they probably still burn gays in a wicker man on midsummer’s eve.”

  “In which case I shall be fine, seeing as we’re already into July.”

  “Other solstices are available.”

  “And I’ll be long gone by the next. No, you shan’t dissuade me. Think you a little din can daunt mine ears? I shall woo him with some spirit, and board him before the clouds in autumn crack.”

  “So certain of yourself, Petruchio? Fifty pounds says you don’t.”

  “I’ll take your bet. I’m born to tame him.”

  “A bargain, then. But don’t blame me if you end up cursing your wooing.”

  Tristan spent a peaceful night, his dreams rather magnificently inhabited by a certain member of the labouring classes. He was just in the middle of a sumptuous historical epic, featuring Tristan as Rome’s youngest senator and Con as a trouser-clad barbarian envoy in dire need of civilisation, when he was rudely awoken by someone knocking on the door.

  Damn it. Tristan had just offered Con a golden platter of freshly peeled grapes—not peeled by him, obviously; his dream-self had people to do these things—and been about to insinuate that there was something else he’d rather have peeled. He tried to drift back into slumber… Yes, there they were…

  The knocking sounded again, louder this time.

  Bugger and tarnation. Tristan hurled back the blankets (Nanna Geary hadn’t agreed with new-fangled duvets), marched to the window and flung it open to shout down at the street below. “Whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave!”

  Con’s face stared up at him, his brow creased in a frown. “What did you just call me?”

  Tristan gulped. His wooing, it appeared, was not getting off to an auspicious start. “Ah. Forgive me. No aspersions intended on the character of your dear mother, which I’m certain is entirely without blemish.”

  Con looked, if anything, even angrier. His face had taken on the sort of colour that, if seen in the morning sky, would send a prudent shepherd scampering for his crook. “What do you know about my mum?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Tristan said quickly. “For all I know, you sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus. Might I ask why you’re disturbing my slumbers at the ungodly hour of…” He glanced at Nanna Geary’s old-fashioned alarm clock, which he’d made damned certain wasn’t set to go off after the first morning when he woke up thinking someone had installed a fire alarm inside his skull. “…ten o’clock in the morning?”

  Con’s colour subsided to a more normal hue, and his feet performed a rather endearing shuffle on the pavement. “Um. Well, you said you had some jobs for me, so…”

  “Absolutely! Splendid. Just one moment, and I’ll be with you.” Tristan closed the window and hastened to his bedroom door. His hand upon the doorknob, he paused. Was opening the door in his current state of nudity advisable? True, it might advance the wooing somewhat, but on the other hand, it might just as easily send Con running for his no doubt tediously virtuous mother. Tristan could picture her now: a solid woman with a plain face and well-rounded hips who fed her son on vast quantities of red meat and boiled vegetables.

  The maternal image caused a definite deflation in areas Tristan would much prefer Con see at their best, and that decided it. Clothes it was. Tristan pulled on his trousers and slipped a shirt around his shoulders, then checked his reflection. Yes, that should do it: respectably covered, but with a hint of debauchery. And nobody did debauchery like Tristan. He blew his reflection a saucy kiss and hurtled downstairs to open the door.

  If anything, Con appeared even larger and more magnificent today. The jeans were the same, but the grimy white singlet had been replaced by a spotless red one. Tristan beamed. “Excellent, excellent. Labouring on a Saturday. My orthodox ancestors would be appalled, but personally, I applaud your work ethic. It must be the Eastern European in you. You did say your forebears were of Eastern European extraction, did you not?” Tristan was nervous, he realised, resisting the urge to wipe his palms on his clothing. Why was he nervous? No, no, he couldn’t be nervous. That would be ridiculous.

  Then again, Con was frowning. Possibly because, as Tristan now recalled, all he’d said about his origins yesterday was that he was neither black nor Irish. Damn it.

  Miraculously, the storm clouds cleared once more. Tristan gave himself a mental pat on the back for having left his shirt unbuttoned. “Uh, can I come in?” Con asked, his voice strangely hesitant.

  “Of course! Step this way. Well, you know the way, of course, having been here only yesterday. And upon many other occasions, of course. In fact, now I come to think about it, you’ve probably been here more times than I have, ahahaha.” Tristan cringed internally, but Con actually gave a polite smile at the feeble joke.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  Once again, the boat-sized footwear was kicked off on the doormat, and Con padded into Nanna Geary’s living room like a miscast understudy who’d carelessly neglected to learn his lines, only to unexpectedly find himself replacing the star on opening night. “So, um, where did you want me to start?” he asked, looking around him as if for inspiration.

  “Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change,” Tristan murmured to himself. Still, odd though this compliant manner might be after yesterday’s belligerence, he’d be a fool not to take advantage of it. “Oh, no hurry,” he said in more normal tones. “Coffee? Tea? Bacon and eggs? I was just about to make a spot of breakfast.”

  Con ran a hand through his unruly dark locks. “Uh, I’m good, thanks.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you are,” Tristan purred. “Coffee, then,” he decided. “After all, we shouldn’t want you falling asleep on the job.” He strode to the kitchen and opened up a cupboard.

  Nanna Geary having been a confirmed tea drinker, Tristan had taken care to lay in stocks of his preferred brand of instant—he’d used to be a stickler for cafetière coffee, but if there was one thing life on the road with the Players had taught him, it was that one couldn’t afford to be a coffee snob. Or, for that matter, a food snob, or an accommodation snob—really, it was remarkable he’d survived at all, with all the roughing it he’d had to put up with.

  Actually, Tristan admitted to himself as he filled the kettle, it’d been bloody good fun. He was going to miss all that when he was in New York. He sighed and grabbed the biscuit tin. “Choccy biccie?” he asked, proffering it to Con, who
was hovering uneasily in the doorway. “If you’re sure I can’t tempt you with the bacon.”

  Con frowned but took a biscuit. “You said you were Jewish.”

  Tristan tsked. “Secular. Do you see me in kippah and payot? You do not,” he added quickly, guessing from Con’s look of bafflement that the question was anything but rhetorical to him. “The kippah is a skull cap; the payot the sidelocks. And I thought religious education was compulsory even in state schools.”

  “Yeah, well. It was a while ago. And I didn’t get on too well at school, all right?”

  Tristan bit back the impulse to raise an ironic eyebrow and say something witty about Con’s clearly high-flying career path. From the pinkish tinge to the man’s cheeks, it probably wouldn’t be taken in the spirit in which it was intended. “Never mind. I’m quite sure you have excellent qualities in other spheres.” Tristan allowed his gaze to trail appreciatively over some of Con’s excellent qualities. “Milk? Sugar?”

  The pink tinge deepened noticeably. “Just milk. Thanks.” He took the proffered mug as though it were a lifebelt tossed to him in a stormy sea. “Um.”

  “Yes?” Tristan looked Con in the eye, all polite attention, which had the not unexpected effect of causing him to drop his gaze and shuffle his sock-clad feet.

  “Look, you’re an actor, right? I mean, you’re a proper actor, yeah? So, um, you probably won’t wanna—but I promised her I’d ask—I mean, you’d be really helping us out, but, yeah, there’s no reason why you should. But. Um. It’s tonight. If you wanted to. Rehearsal, I mean.”

  Tristan waited, but Con’s wellspring of gobbledygook appeared to have run dry. “For?” he enquired politely.

  Con stared at him blankly for a moment, then blinked. “Oh. Midsummer Night’s Dream—you know, Shakespeare.”

  Tristan nodded gravely. “I believe I have heard of him, yes. And my role in this would be?”