‘Why’s that then, Collar?’ asked little Bor, knowing his place and, for once, his lines.
‘’Cause you keep them up your arse.’
‘All right you lot,’ Brian bleated. He clapped his hands and adopted his ‘lost in the magical world of theatre’ expression. ‘Let’s go on. Have you all brought your scripts?’
They stared at him in deep incomprehension. He sighed, recognising the moment, for there had been many such. And yet, how rosy it had all seemed on day one. There they were, his raw material. There he was, a gifted Svengali ready to unlock talent and enthusiasm that a plodding, authoritarian educational system had all but vanquished Under his concerned tutelage they would expand and flower. Eventually their lives, immeasurably enriched, would intermingle with his own. Then they would be not teacher and pupils but friends. Lately, by some indulgently tortuous manoeuvre of his mind, Brian had seen one of them - preferably Edie or Tom - becoming famous and adopting his mentor’s surname in gratitude. Like Richard Burton.
Brian acknowledged no multiplicity of motives in all this. He gave, they took. He chose not to admit the charge he got in return. Those heady, fearful moments when an improvisation got out of hand and violence scented the air. (Brian had a warmly sentimental attitude towards violence, largely because he had never been around when any was being dished out. He referred to it sometimes as grace under pressure, tossing the phrase as casually into a conversation as if it had been his own.)
But the truth was that these moments reflected uncomfortably similar disturbances in his own heart. Repressed, they fuelled his dreams, spawning lubricious disorder. Why only last night—
Brian, struggling to quell these torrid recollections, found the Carter twins in his direct line of vision. Today Tom was in a Confederate Army greatcoat and tight snakeskin trousers. He sported a button showing a police helmet over the slogan ‘DESTROY THE HUMPBACKED PIGS’.
Edie rose from a circle of unseamed felt like a flower from a grubby black calyx. The skirt was slashed to the waist and worn over a tiny pair of striped fur shorts. Brian’s skin darkened still further at his first glimpse of these raffish tormentors. He took a deep breath, got down on his haunches and said, ‘What I’d really like is to end this play with what is known in the business as a coo dee tayartray.’
‘We had one of them,’ said little Bor, ‘but the wheel came off.’
‘A dazzling effect to stun and amaze.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ said Edie.
‘But one does have to work up to this sort of thing and, quite frankly, I’m not at all sure we’re in a recruitment mode in every sphere.’
‘Fact is Bri,’ said Denzil, ‘100% British Made’ according to the stencil across his forehead, ‘what we’d really like to do is something by ourselves.’
‘Yeah.’ Collar was enthusiastic. ‘I bet we’d be real good.’
‘I hardly think so.’ Brian felt shut out and rather hurt that they could even think of such a thing. ‘You’d never have the discipline for a start.’
There was a chorus of ‘oh yes we woulds.’
‘OK, where are the computer print-outs you promised to learn DLP at our last rehearsal?’
‘What’s DLP?’ asked little Bor.
‘Dick-licking pervo,’ said Denzil, quickly rewarded by a full house of guffaws. He pushed his tongue out as far as it would go and wagged it about, spraying the air with spittle.
‘We could try though, Brian,’ said Edie, ‘couldn’t we?’
‘If you insist.’ He could refuse her nothing. ‘But I must remind you that we’re running very short of time. I know yesterday’s interruption wasn’t your fault, but even before the police arrived we’d got nowhere. Messing about being chickens does not help us produce a text.’
‘I don’t see why chickens shouldn’t be in a play,’ said Collar. ‘People gotta eat.’
‘Wotcha think of Gavin Troy, Brian?’ asked Denzil.
‘Who?’
‘The red-headed git in the leathers.’
‘He seemed all right.’
‘He’s a bastard,’ continued Collar.
‘Nearly broke Denzil’s arm.’
‘Goodness.’
‘Have you as soon as look at you, Troy would,’ said Denzil, adding, not without a certain pride, ‘Missed me by a hare’s breath last week.’
‘What were you—?’
‘He had our Duane,’ said Collar. ‘And he weren’t doing nothing neither. Just happened to be standing by this chippie on the market square—’