Now Am I In Arden
A story by Ivor Sukwell and Kyle McKenzie. A story about a boy and a man with all that such entails. The setting is modern and based around the theatre, Not your thing? Sorry about that, we're sure you'll find something that is. Whatever your choice, please remember Nifty needs your donations.
Now Am I In Arden
Chapter five
He was asleep when I woke in the morning and I crept quietly out of bed so as not to wake him and went down to the kitchen for coffee, nicotine, thinking and, after the second coffee, a phone call. She was out, or asleep, so I just left a message for her to call me as soon as she could, showered and shaved, shaving took much longer this time as there was a lot more of me to shave, made a tea and took it upstairs to sleeping Jacob Brat.
Not fully sleeping, his eyes opened blearily at my return
"Don't know if you like tea in bed in the mornings," I smiled soppily at him, "Just chuck it down the sink if you don't."
"Cheers," I sleepily struggled up into a sitting position and took a mouthful of tea. It was hot and had no sugar but I took another gulp anyway, rubbing my eyes as I did so to clear the sleep from them.
"Sorry about the night," I gave him a shy grin doubting I had much to apologise for, "was horny as fuck."
He was showered but naked and I guessed freshly shaved, as his little body hair had now disappeared.
"You need to get some cream, having to shave too much gives you a rash."
The phone rang as I was doing the sausages and I stuck it on speaker, forgetting completely that it would be on speaker in the bedroom as well.
"Hi Sis," I said as I turned the sausages over, "Got a job for you if you're interested." Sis was, in my opinion, and in hers as well, the world's greatest voice teacher and a long standing friend. "You know I'm doing this As You at the Globe and you may also know I've got Jacob Wills as Roz. Any chance you could teach him how to talk?
"That snooty precocious brat," came Sis's voice "God help you."
"He's not that bad, Sis," I said, "And he says he wants to be an actor. A real one."
"God help you again," Sis said.
"I've got three weeks rehearsal, if you could manage a couple of hours a day, five days a week for that, then how much?"
"Usual," Sis said, "But you'll never get the Globe to cough up. They're always skint."
"They won't, I agreed, "This one's on me."
"God help us all! You got a hard on for the boy or something? No, don't answer that, I don't want to know. Cost you three grand, Rich. Can't do it for less, I'm sorry."
"Deal," I said, and ended the call.
"NO, not if you prefer not to be," I called up the stairs, not even thinking that he'd just heard that phone conversation, "And I think you can guess what I'd prefer." The boy had asked if he needed to get dressed for breakfast; silly question as far as I was concerned!
The sausages were done, eggs and bacon next.
I wandered down the stairs still yawning. I had showered but my hair was still a bit damp and I rubbed it with my hand as I flopped into a chair in the kitchen.
"Wasn't Mum was it?" I hadn't really caught the conversation and was curious about who he had been speaking to.
"Who? What?" I flopped fried eggs onto fried bread then it hit me; he'd heard my phone call. "No," I said hastily, "Just an old friend."
I had been on the shower for most of the conversation and had only caught a bits of it, more when I came down the stairs.
"Who's snooty?" I grabbed some toast and started eating before being invited to tuck in.
"What you on about?" I tried to pretend I didn't know what he was talking about, what Sis had called him on the phone.
"Someone is a snooty precocious brat," he went bright red and I suddenly realised why he was tongue tied.
"Were they talkin about me?" The look on his face gave the game away immediately.
"They were," I admitted, "And I told them they were mistaken." I shoved his fried breakfast in front of him. "Orange juice?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.
"What the fuck?" I was annoyed that someone I didn't know had decided to slag me off and slammed my cup down angrily.
"Who was it?" I demanded, wanting to know who had such a low opinion of me. I knew young actors had a bad reputation for being precocious, but I didn't think I was snooty!
"Someone you've probably never heard of," I shrugged, "Sis Bowden, if you must know."
I was pretty sure he'd never have heard of her, fairy queen and pansy Ross had no time for experts like her.
"What's she do? Apart from be a bitch." I knew I was being rude but the insult had hurt.
"Teaches people how to speak," I sighed, "If they listen to her."
"You think I need her to teach me?" I scowled a bit as I spoke to him, though in my heart I wanted his opinion.
"If you want to be an actor, a REAL actor, then, yes, I do. She is the very, very best there is," I added, hoping that might calm him down a little.
I scowled a bit but went back to eating the fried food which tasted good after the previous night's exhausting fun.
"If you say she's good," I shrugged as if to say I'll try it, then had a thought.
"Shouldn't I ask Mum and Sandy?" If Mr Williams thought it was a good idea then, despite being annoyed, I was keen to try but was also worried about what everyone else who `managed' my career would think.
"Mum will have to know," I agreed, "But fairy queen will tell you not to waste your time, that you don't need her, you're good enough as it is."
I tried to eat, but somehow the sausages tasted like sawdust.
"Oh," Mum and Sandy sort of got on, though she didn't completely trust him not to rip me off, but I was beginning to suspect that Richard Williams and my agent were not going to get on.
"So errr what do I tell him?" Since being picked up by his agency I had always gone with what Sandy had suggested, though we had recently disagreed over what I should do after these plays. That still hadn't been decided, with both Mum and Sandy wanting me to do different things neither of which appealed to me.
"If you want to be an actor, tell him to go and do one," I shrugged, "He wants the ten or twenty percent you bring him. He doesn't give a monkey's fart if you're good or not, all he's interested in is how much money you bring in for him."
Harsh, perhaps, but it was true nevertheless.
"And," I added, "If you decide to take the third option, and work with me, he'll drop you like a hot brick. No money in a boy who's not making crap films. Same goes for if you go to the posh school your mum's got in mind for you."
"It's fifteen percent," I admitted, wondering what to do.
I knew Sandy was only interested in the money I made him and would put me in any old shit if it was paying well, but while I wanted to be an actor I also had to admit I quite liked being fairly famous. You got to do cool things and meet cool people, and while doing theatre plays could also be fun I knew I didn't love it the same way Richard Williams loved it.
"No way am I going to that school," I told him, "I'd have to board there and it's like a fucking prison." The buildings we had seen when the headmaster showed us round had of course been nothing like a prison, but I still hadn't shared mum's enthusiasm for going there.
"I want to be good but..." my voice trailed off as I was too embarrassed to say I wanted to be rich as well.
"Like they offered me Patroclus in that new TV show about Troy. Richard Davis is producing it," I dropped the name of the famous director in the hope of impressing him, or at least convincing him it wasn't going to be utter rubbish.
"Sandy says I can get more money for less work and Mum doesn't want me in something so raunchy, but it's a cool part."
"Davis isn't bad, " I admitted, "At film and tv anyway. And you'll get money for it, more than you would in learning how to act. All you'll get from that is knowing that you can, and are good, and can make a live audience laugh and cry, transport them to a different world for two or three hours, bring them, for a time, into your world. Maybe not what you want. Money is attractive. Fame is as well, however short-lived."
"I do want that but..." the world Mum and Sandy had mapped out for me was very clear, bigger jobs year on year and more money. It was a `career', and while it sounded exciting I was also not sure if their ideas were what I wanted to do.
I did want to learn from Richard, not just because I enjoyed being with him in his bed but because he seemed to understand how I felt onstage. Problem was he seemed only to feel that way on stage, while I liked to imagine myself in front of cameras as well.
"Will you only teach me if I work for you?" I knew the easy option, at least for the next few hours until Mum and Sandy found out, would be to tell him I would do it but I was still unsure.
I had some idea of the problem he had, the same problem as a young football player would have. The lure of the money was huge and the thought that it may only be there for a year or two at most never entered his head.
And he didn't really have a clue how different live theatre was from film, the difference between holding a character for three hours a night for weeks on end, and holding it for ten or twenty seconds at a time.
"I don't do shit," I said simply, "So As You won't be shit, and Sis and I together will do our damndest to make sure you aren't shit either. What you decide to do after the run is up to you. I can't tell you what you should choose, I don't have that right. Nor does anyone else. You go with what's in your heart, and you won't go far wrong. Now," I started clearing away the plates, "Shall we do a bit of work?"
"Ok. Cool," I smiled at him, relieved he hadn't pushed the point and helped him put away the plates. I knew the need to make a decision hadn't been removed, only pushed further into the future but for the moment that was enough.
"So what are we going to do?" I asked him when the kitchen was tidy.
"We're going into the lounge," I told him, "No weed cos your mum won't be too happy if her darling boy is up and away somewhere in space when she gets here. Ciggies if you want, lunch and a good teeth clean and mouthwash will get rid of any breathy give-ways."
He sniggered and followed me into the lounge, flopping himself, wonderfully, gloriously naked still, onto the sofa. I handed him a sheet of typescript I'd bashed out with coffee and earlier morning nicotine. "Read," I said, "Not aloud, just to yourself. Then read it again and again. Try to feel the words, feel what they are. Feel yourself saying them if you can."
I left him to do that and shoved a leg of lamb in the oven to slowly roast. When his mother arrived she was going to find a well-looked after and well-fed boy.
The lines were the first few lines of, guess what, Mercutio's Queen Mab.
I read the lines again and again as Richard banged about in the kitchen. At first I just read them sitting down but then got up and silently walked the room deciding how I would deliver each word.
We had studied Romeo and Juliet in English and I remembered this scene for being strange, and wondered why he had given me this one in particular.
"O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you." I started, not really watching him as I tried to lose myself as Mercutio. He was one of the good characters in what I thought was a pretty boring play and I tried to make him jokey at the start and progressively darker as the speech went on.
He was wandering around the room when I went back, and I just stood and watched for a minute or two. I wasn't looking at his attempts to move the speech, I was looking at him, at the naked lovely boy.
"Sit," I ordered, and he did.
I told him of a wet Tuesday summer evening in Scarborough, of a fire bucket and the advice I'd been given. He giggled at the fire bucket, though I'm not sure if he believed me or not and then I handed him another bit of paper. The same lines but with, I hoped, some indication of how they may be said. "Bold means emphasise," I told him, "Hyphened means run one word into the next. In your head first, then try it aloud. But do it sitting down, don't for fuck's sake try to act it. It's all about the words. Nothing but the words."
O, then-I-c-Queen Mab
hath-been-with-you.
She-is-the-fairies midwife, and-she-comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On-the-forefinger-of-an-alderman
Drawn with-a team of-little atomies
Over-men's-noses-as-they-lie-asleep.
was what was written on the paper.
And while he looked and tried to make sense of it, I, unashamedly, admired his body.
I stared at the paper, trying to make sense of the speech as he wanted it. His inflections gave it a strange, slightly dreamy, sense and I ran it through my head a few more times before delivering it out loud.
"Not the only way it can be said," I shrugged, "Each man in his time plays many parts, and each part in its time has many actors, what matters is how the Mercutio you and your director develop between you says the words as that Mercutio would say them. There is only the words and the one-time truth of those words. Find the truth that works for you. It's all there, all in the words." I wondered if he had the faintest idea of what I was talking about, so I asked him if he did.
"Sort of," I told him as he continued to admire my body. He wasn't lusting after me at the moment, just admiring me like he would a painting.
"Like every Mercutio is different, it depends how much of himself the actor puts into it."
"Yes and no," I nodded, pleased that he was following me, "Perhaps on how much of himself the actor can find in the words to put into it. More words," I said and tossed him a Dick Two, "Look at Dick's `Let us sit upon the ground' speech and tell me what you could put into that. Not how you try to play it, just what of yourself you can find in it."
I was working him now, because he was worth working on, but that didn't stop me from admiring what it was I was working on.
"For god's sake let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories..."
I tried to put a sense of melancholy into the speech, as if I was not just remembering a sad event but thinking of a sad event which would come. I already had an idea of what sad event I might need to confront, and that allowed me to put some extra maudlin into a few lines.
"Sad works in a way, and it's been done many times like that. But look at the words again. Is Dick just plain sad? Or is he angry, almost to the point of violence by what has brought him to sadness? Remember how you snarled at me yesterday morning? Give that a try and see how it feels."
"For god's sake let us sit upon the ground...". This time I tried to make it angry, furious and sarcastic like I was railing against doing nothing but being sad, thinking about what had or could go wrong. I tried to inject the `god's sake' with the anger and the `sad stories' with the sarcasm, as if I was furious but could do nothing but be angry.
Being fourteen it wasn't a particularly hard act to pull off, and as I tried it again I thought I got the mixture of anger and impotence more in balance.
"Good, boy, good," I encouraged him, and then gave him Marlowe, Fletcher and Webster and followed that with poetry, a bit of Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality, Eliot's 'Prufrock;, and lastly Dylan Thomas's 'Over Sir John's Hill' While he was trying to make some sense of that my mobile rang and the display said it was Sis. It had to be about the boy, and I felt he had every right to hear what was being said about him, so I turned on the loudspeaker.
"Been thinking," Sis boomed, "As it's for you, do it for one and a half."
"No you won't, Sis. We agreed on three."
"You can't afford three, not on the pittance you'll be getting from the Globe. God knows why you work for that sort of money. Oh, I know, it's Shakespeare. You'd take two lumps of coal from a Miners Welfare Hall if it was for a Shakespeare."
"Probably," I agreed.
"Look, if I've only got three weeks with the slug, I'll need to see him before rehearsals start. See if he can even open his mouth, let alone speak."
"Oh, he can open his mouth well enough, no doubt about that." I caught Jacob's eye and saw him trying to stifle a snigger.
"When can you get him for me? No charge for the assessment and diagnosis."
"Not after charity, Sis."
"You're going to pay for his lessons then I'll chuck that in for free. No arguments."
"It's his last week of term coming up. I'll see if he can get an afternoon off. That okay, Sis?"
"Have to be. And you, Rich, you be careful."
Sis ended the call and the boy was looking at me with raised eyebrows.
"Sounds like a right old dragon," I gave Robert a smirk, "Hope her bark is worse than her bite."
Something in the conversation had made me suspicious however and I gave him a look. "What did she mean about you paying?"
"Sis is the most kind-hearted person you will ever meet. Just be careful she doesn't hug you." I grinned at the thought of Sis, who was built like a miniature sumo wrestler, hugging slender Jacob Brat and hearing the rib bones crack.
"Paying?" I questioned, "Oh, nothing to bother you there."
I gave him another look. "Don't treat me like a kid, everyone else does and it annoys me."
"Very well, Jacob," no 'Brat' this time, "I've asked Sis to teach you. Just you, not the cast, and she's a professional and deserves to be paid for what she does."
"And you're paying?" I gave him a look and realised he couldn't lie to me.
"I can't ask you to do that," I was touched that he would want to help me but felt bad that he was spending so much.
"I said I don't do shit," I said, making light of it, "And I said I'd do my best to make sure that you're not shit. That was a promise, and this arsehole keeps his promises.
Now, you've worked hard this morning, really hard and without a hint of complaint. Proud of you, really proud. Well done, lad."
"Not deliberately changing the subject are you?" I gave him a smirk, pleased with the compliment none the less.
"How long before Mum gets here?" I was anxious not to be naked when she arrived.
"Couple of hours yet" I said, looking at my watch. "Time for lunch first, time for you to get decent, though I must confess I do like you not decent," I smiled at him and wanted to give him another hug and cuddle, but that would have been taking advantage of him and the situation, so I resisted the urge and just smiled.
I smirked, "Have I gotta?" I put on a pretend bratty voice to play up to his name for me.
"Never for me," I grinned at him, "But mum may not be too keen on the way I like you to look," He grinned back and wiggled his hips at me, and that made his soft glory swing gently from side to side as he wiggled. He knew I was staring, and what I was staring at, and he grinned again and wiggled some more."
I giggled and shimmied my body, making my cock swing.
"Want a last feel before I put it away?" I shimmied up to him, not touching him but teasing him by being too close.
"If that's an invitation, it would be gross bad manners of me to refuse."
I giggled as he felt me up. He stroked and fondled my cock, moaning happily as I grew to a semi in his hand.
It was an invitation and I loved the way his softness turned to hardness while I felt him. Not wanting to waste what was bound to be my last chance, I led him, unprotesting, to the sofa, and sat with him in my arms, feeling his hardness, his wonderful thighs. and, on pure, unreasoning impulse, kissed him where I hadn't kissed him before - on a nipple.
The result stunned me! He gasped, his body arched and he whimpered "Oh yes," in my hair.
"Fuck yeah," he jumped back a bit as I moaned loudly and I put a hand on the back of his head to stop it going too far.
"Bite it," he looked appalled at the idea and I smirked. "Like nibble it, not too hard but so I feel it."
How wonderful the body of a boy is! So many different parts of it, all designed to give and receive pleasure! Gently I did as he asked, nibbling carefully, but he demanded more so I nibbled a bit more and he sighed and moaned and ran his hands through my hair. Sneaky, because he also kept me from taking my mouth away from his nipple, and because of that I kept nibbling, though I did switch to swirling licks from time to time.
An exploring hand found his slender cock solid once more, and I wondered if I dare ask if he would feed me one last time.
"Fuck more yeah," my cock was more than semi now, rock solid in fact, and I moaned loudly as he nipped and teased my nipples.
"Need to cum," I moaned in his ear.
I didn't need to ask, he told me he wanted me to. Oh, he didn't say "suck me," but he did say he needed to cum, and I only knew one way how to make that happen for him.
No rush, I had the best part of an hour if I needed that long, so I did all of what I craved to do. His balls, his thighs and his glorious cock. I didn't try to finger him, used my fingers to tweak and pinch his nipple instead and he seemed to like that, or at least that's how I interpreted his moans.
Then he fed me. How could a boy's balls have so much spunk in then after a night like the one we'd had?
No complaints, though, just wonderful boy ambrosia in my mouth.
"You're wonderful boy, Jacob Brat," I whispered when all was over. "Never can I thank you enough."
He cuddled me into him after I came, holding and stroking me as I panted my way back to reality.
"Felt great," I told him making him blush. "Really fucking good, felt fucking amazing." I don't usually swear so much but I knew he liked hearing me play the bratty teenage boy.
"Any time it's safe, any time you want, you can put your hand in here." At his insistence I had dressed in a pair of grey trackies and a black t-shirt, and before he could react I took his hand and put it inside the front of the loose bottoms so he could feel my package through my underpants.
He meant it, and I knew he meant it. Maybe he was just a fourteen year old boy who needed lots of sex - perhaps boys his age do. How would I know? But he'd said I could hold him again and that was enough for me.
I was snuggled into his chest when the door bell rang and I reluctantly left his embrace so he could get the door.
"Hope you have behaved yourself," I wasn't sure if Mum was talking to me or Mr Williams, and neither of us had `behaved' over the last two, days but I nodded and mumbled something which seems to satisfy her.
"There he is, Mrs ......., safe and sound. And he's worked hard as well. Most pleasing." Any old crap to get rid of her, but getting rid of her meant Jacob Brat leaving as well, and that I was far less keen on.
"We'll see you at rehearsals Mr Williams," I wasn't sure what to say, conscious Mum was in the room so put out my hand for him to shake.
"Oh, Jacob," I said as though it was a sudden afterthought, "Don't forget Sis wants to see you one afternoon this coming week if you can arrange it." It wasn't an afterthought, it was a rather desperate ploy to get a chance of seeing him again unchaperoned.
"Of yeah, of course," Mum wanted to know what that meant and then huffed a bit at the perceived slight that I might need a voice coach.
"Call Sandy, Mr Williams, he'll arrange a time with Jacob." I groaned inwardly as I realised that getting free time with Richard was not going to be simple.
"I don't call agents, Mrs Wills," I gave her her name this time to underline the sweet vitriol I was about to pour on her, "Agents do call me from time to time. Foolish and stupid ones. I deal with actors, Mrs Wills, not the pimps who feed off them." I did smile sweetly as I said it, perhaps that would make the implied insult worse. I hoped so.
Mum scowled and I felt the temperature in the room drop a few degrees as the atmosphere went from frosty to sub-arctic.
"In that case you can call me Mr Williams, as a rule I don't let my teenage son give his phone number to middle aged men."
I went bright red and wanted to sink into the ground. "Mum, stop embarrassing me!"
Mum gave me that look that said I don't care and I tried to make peace between them. "It's just for the play Mum, it's no big deal. It's in London isn't it Mr Williams?" I looked at him imploringly, as if to say help me out here.
I sneaked a wink at Jacob, a wink I hoped he took to mean "stay out of it, leave it to me," and returned to demolishing his bitch of a mother.
"Quite wise, Mrs Wills, absolutely the correct action for a mother who doesn't trust her son."
She visibly blanched at that one. Icicles grew out of her nose.
"Jacob tells me he wants to be an actor," I carried on, ignoring the new Ice Age developing around her, "And, to be fair to him, he has something about him which could develop into him realising that ambition." I knew she thought he was already the finished article, of that I was about to disabuse her. "If he can learn to speak, learn to say words with meaning, not once, but night after night, if he can develop the self-discipline to understand that, at the moment, he is only just a little better than awful, then there may be a chance for him.
He has told me two different futures are planned for him - fifth rate films and a very short life in front of cameras, or a fancy stage school that will teach him almost nothing he doesn't already know. Both would be an utter disaster for him. If, that is, he really wants to be an actor.
He has been offered a third alternative, which, no doubt he will tell you about.
Are you feeling alright, Mrs Wills, you look a little pale."
Jacob, I noticed, had gone from looking horrified to struggling to contain giggles.
I had to laugh. Mum was so angry she couldn't speak and if it had been me who had annoyed her so much I knew I would be in for the grounding of a lifetime.
We sat in silence for a good long time in the car on the drive home, even though it hadn't been me who annoyed her.
Up to you now, Jacob, I said to myself, settled down in my favourite chair and sank a very large malt.
If I had read his mother anywhere near right, she'd rant and rave and then wonder why a world famous stage director would wish to train her fourteen year old son. She'd, naturally suspect the worst, do all the checking she could to confirm her suspicions and find ......... absolutely nothing, Then, the fact that her son's training was going to cost her nothing would kick in. And then ........who knows, but I had a wild guess I'd be seeing quite a lot of Jacob Brat in the not too far distant future.