Beta Male (29 page)

Claire's inscrutable features finally broke into a smile. ‘My
mother always told me I'd be swept off my feet with a big romantic gesture like this,' she said.

‘Really?'

‘No, you idiot. She didn't.'

After that inauspicious start, the ‘big conversation' improved slightly. Claire, it transpired, felt a similar cocktail of emotions to my own, really – confusion, affection, fear. There was ‘definitely something there', we agreed. It would be ‘a shame not to explore the option further'. It was ‘difficult to know how to kick it all off'. We sounded like two bankers discussing an investment opportunity. This semi-excruciating encounter finally concluded with a rather prim peck on the lips and an agreement to go out for dinner after the opening night of
The Cock Monologues
, drink until we could no longer remember our own names, let alone each other's, and then fall into bed, fall in love and live happily ever after.

Simple.

Five minutes before the first curtain, I was crouching backstage, vomiting the single Dutch-courage gin and tonic into the small basin in the corner of what might loosely have been termed my dressing room. I gripped the wall for support and dragged myself slowly back to a standing position, surveying in the mirror the reflected debris of a hundred forgotten productions: a discarded wig, laddered tights, a Sellotaped running order. Outside I could hear the murmur of expectant voices. I looked at myself in the mirror again, checked my make-up and tried to pull myself together. Tonight was important. Tonight was what I did; who I was. I'd forgotten how much I loved and feared and missed the dreadful, toe-curling excitement of going on stage. And then later… Well, we'd come to later, later. That was the right way – the only way – to deal with later.

Claire popped her head round the corner of the dressing room. ‘It's a full house,' she said. The tension showed in her smile.

‘What? You mean we've sold all fifty-five seats?'

She laughed. ‘Yes. And I think we know fifty-four of them between us.'

‘Shame. I'd much rather die on my feet in front of strangers.'

‘Nonsense. Go knock
them
dead.'

No one died in the first part of that evening – either on stage or off it. It was, Claire assured me afterwards, a triumph. I had to be told, because I could scarcely remember any of it myself. Some actors are acutely aware of an audience. They hear every programme rustle, every cough. They can't help but notice the unsmiling faces of the first row and the great emptiness beyond. But when it's going well for me, I vanish into a kind of trance. And this went very well indeed. I was only truly conscious of where I'd been when the house lights came up and I was standing exhausted in the spotlight, receiving a standing ovation from fifty-four people I knew.

‘Just so funny,' declared Matt when I joined the others downstairs afterwards.

‘I loved the skit about the perils of going skinny-dipping in cold weather,' said Alan.

‘You would,' said Jess.

‘Oi,' replied Alan, laughing.

‘My favourite was the monologue about male changing rooms,' said Matt.

‘You would like that bit, King Kong,' said Claire.

‘How would you know?' I said, a little jealously.

‘No, seriously, Sam,' said Alan. ‘Funniest thing I've ever seen. You were brilliant.'

‘Nothing to do with me. I'm just the talking prop. Ed here is the real genius.'

‘It's not really supposed to be funny… ' Ed started to say, before shrugging and tailing off. He was enjoying the plaudits as much as I was. We all decided to stay in the pub downstairs to celebrate a successful opening night. The critics were in the following evening and they might not be as generous as
fifty-four acquaintances. Painful past experience had taught me that it was best to enjoy the preview period while it lasted.

We settled in at a table downstairs, where I had drink after drink bought for me and basked in the praise. It's surprising, really, that more actors aren't egomaniacal alcoholics. You get up late and spend the evenings as the centre of attention twice over – once on-stage, and again in the pub – as everyone plies you with beer and tells you how wonderful you are.

One person, however, didn't think I was wonderful at all.

‘You really are a cock,' said Ed when we found ourselves alone briefly the wrong side of midnight.

‘Thank you, Ed. I'm a method actor and I like to inhabit the role I'm portraying.'

‘No, I mean it. You
really
are a cock.'

Away from the others at last, Ed went on to nit-pick the bits of the monologues Claire and I had changed. He didn't feel we'd reflected the seriousness of his art; we'd debased the high tone of his campaign, etc. But it was clear there was something else on his mind. He'd seemed happy enough earlier when everyone was praising his artistic genius.

‘Come on, Ed,' I said. ‘What is it really? Is it Tara?'

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, I guess. Partly. I really wanted her to turn up and see this. But she's on holiday or something.' He took another huge swig of his beer. ‘But also, it's about Claire.'

‘Claire?'

I listened as Ed explained how he had fallen for our friend. How he'd met up with Claire alone in the evenings. How he had felt threatened and overshadowed when the three of us were together.

‘So, essentially, you're a cock,' he concluded. ‘I only put this stupid play on to spend more time with Claire. And then you went and got in the way by saying yes to my token offer to act in it, when you were supposed to say no.'

Well, perhaps I should have been more understanding, and
told Ed that we shouldn't fight over a girl, let alone a girl who was also a friend to both of us. But Ed had riled me. I'd stopped his bloody play being a complete disaster, hadn't I? He was far more of a cock than me, in fact. At least I'd been straight up about the whole Claire thing. I hadn't been banging golf clubs on walls.

‘Cock yourself,' I replied, maturely.

‘Cock you.'

‘Cock off.'

Ed unleashed a primeval roar and grabbed me by the shirt. Maybe he had run out of cock-based insults.

‘Look, what do you expect me to do?' I removed his hands from my shirt. ‘Quietly step aside for you? Throw in the towel? You can't just put a “reserved” sign over someone if your friend also likes them.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because that's not how it works. Anyway, isn't this Claire's decision?'

‘I don't see what Claire has to do with it,' said Ed.

I laughed, before realising he wasn't joking. ‘Mate, I've already told her how I feel. Plus, she feels the same and we're going to have sex tonight.'

‘You what?'

I explained our arrangement.

‘Fine,' said Ed. ‘In that case, I challenge you to a drinking contest. Last man standing gets Claire.'

‘I don't think Claire wants you, Ed, standing or not.'

‘Shut up, Sam. A drinking contest.'

‘Why not just challenge me to a duel, you cock? Or shall we just get them out and measure them?'

‘Shut up. A drinking contest.'

I accepted, if only to shut him up myself. Quite frankly, I couldn't see any other way of getting rid of Ed that evening. And so it was that I found myself standing at the bar, the evening of my first theatrical performance in eighteen months,
throwing shot after shot of tequila down my throat with one of my oldest, but least loved, friends in a bid to ascertain who would get to sleep with one of my oldest, and most loved, friends.

Tequila is meant to make you happy, if you believe the song. But it didn't. It made Ed throw up. And it made me horribly, unhappily drunk. The others put Ed in a taxi and went home themselves, leaving me and Claire looking coyly at each other across an empty bar. This was it, then. I had won. Here was my prize.
Congratulations.

‘How are you feeling?' said Claire, moving closer and taking my hand.

I gazed unsteadily into her eyes. ‘Ready.'

But I wasn't ready. Far from it. I wasn't ready when Claire started to kiss me, and I felt no more emotion than when we'd done something similar at drama school all those years ago. I wasn't ready when she rubbed up against me like an affectionate cat, purring, nuzzling and occasionally breaking off to scratch my neck in what I think was supposed to be an erotic, feline gesture. And I certainly wasn't ready when she reached into my trousers during the taxi ride back to hers and started quoting lines from the play we had been working on for the past three weeks.

‘Is Mr Postlethwaite pleased to see me…? Oh, hello, Mr Postlethwaite… Anyone at home… ? Where is my great big angry cock?'

I played along as much as I could, quoting the lines back at her, laughing as we tumbled semi-naked along her hallway and into her bedroom. Yet even the laughter didn't seem to help Mr Postlethwaite, who was on strike, partly thanks to the tequila I had had to drink to get to this unhappy stage, partly thanks to Claire's bizarre notion of foreplay.

Mr Postlethwaite was finally persuaded to salvage some degree of pride by his owner thinking of his ex-girlfriend Rosie, allowing Claire, who would never be my girlfriend, I now realised, to mount Mr Postlethwaite like a rabid banshee on heat.

‘Oh, Sam,' she moaned, gathering steam.

‘Oh, Claire,' I moaned, rapidly losing steam.

Oh, Claire
, I really meant to say.
What has happened to us?
What has happened to me? Why am I lying here on my back, squinting drunkenly up at my steam-gathering friend whom I don't fancy in the slightest? Why am I so scared of being alone that I thought this would be some kind of solution? The truth was that I was never going to be ready. Not now. Not with Claire. Not with anyone.
I am not a swan.

‘Oh, Sam,' she moaned again.

‘Oh, Claire,' I echoed, my eyes tightly closed. Just a few more minutes and we could forget the whole thing.

‘Oh, Sam.'

‘Oh, Claire.'

‘Oh, Sam.'

It was a different sort of moan this time. Not a good moan. ‘What's wrong?' she said.

I stopped abruptly. ‘Everything. Absolutely everything. I'm so sorry.'

‘Don't be,' she said, rolling away and leaving Mr Postlethwaite to die a thousand deaths. ‘Everything is wrong for me, too. I'm just a whole lot better at faking it than you.'

We lay companionably in her uncomfortable bed, talking and laughing as couples do, but in every way not a couple. Claire asked if I was gay, because I clearly didn't fancy her. I asked her if she was a lesbian, because she clearly didn't fancy me. She punched me slightly too hard on the arm and we agreed that we would be better friends to each other from then on, even though we both knew it would never be quite the same again. We had crossed a line and there was no coming back, however much both of us wanted to retreat.

At 3am, just as we were falling into an uneasy sleep, my phone rang.

‘Ignore it,' mumbled Claire, sleepily.

At 3.01am, hers went. Then mine again. Then hers.

I picked hers up.

‘It's me,' said Alan, his voice almost unrecognisable with fear. ‘I'm at A&E with Ed. Please come right away.'

‘Just ignore it, Alan,' muttered Jess, turning in her sleep.

It wasn't the first time that Ed had called us in the middle of the night. When Tara first dumped him, he would often ring at strange times, knowing that I would provide a friendly ear for his drunken angst. Then, as his new campaign gathered pace, the calls dried up and Jess and I enjoyed our sleep uninterrupted again. You cannot indulge your friends for ever, we reasoned. Surely Ed realised that.

So when the phone went this time, at 2am after the first night of his play, Jess and I were probably both thinking ‘here we go again'.

But thank God I didn't ignore it. Something made me pick it up – the same instinct which prevented me from drifting back into confused slumber when all I could hear at the other end was heavy, raspy breathing followed by the sound of the phone being dropped and the line going dead. Something told me this was serious.

I flung on some clothes and opened the door to Sam's room. He must have gone back with Claire, because Matt was sleeping in his bed.

‘Quick.' I shook his covers. ‘Wake up.'

Years, however distant, of night-time practice on medical wards had left their mark. Matt was dressed and in my car within ninety seconds. As we tore across town to Ed's flat, there must have been twice the legal limit of alcohol in my blood, yet I had never felt more sober in my life. Matt called Ed again and again en route, but there was still no answer. Fearing the worst, we double-parked outside, rang the bell, thumped on the door and eventually got in by breaking the
same kitchen window as the last two burglars to loot his flat. Ed was lying on the sofa, still fully dressed, his phone in one outstretched arm, a packet of pills in the other. On the table, next to a half-empty bottle of vodka, was a handwritten note: ‘To my friends'.

‘Bollocks to that,' said Matt, screwing up the note with one hand and checking for Ed's pulse with the other. He nodded grimly, cleared Ed's airway and lifted him as if he were a small child, Ed's limp arms looped round his broad shoulders.

‘Get the car,' he commanded, picking up the pills with his spare hand and checking the label. I had never seen anyone so completely in their element. ‘We've got about fifteen minutes to get him to a hospital.'

The next day, when Ed felt well enough to talk a little about what had happened, he confided that he had no idea why he'd called me. His mind had been made up; the note written; the pills taken.

‘I suppose there must have been a bigger part of my subconscious wanting me to live than wanting me to die,' he reasoned.