FOUR STROKES AND YOU'RE . . .

Kevin couldn’t stop glancing at the clock.  It was already 8:17, but they hadn’t come for him. This was Tuesday, wasn’t it?

Every Tuesday it was the same. Crowded in the stuffy homework room under dim yellow lights, they’d wait for the messenger to come over from the house. First, they’d hear his scrunching footsteps in the gravel on the parade ground outside. Then, when he entered, he’d evade all eyes in the hushed classroom, stoop to the prefect’s ear and whisper the names of those to be called.

            Kevin sat at his desk near the back of the room among some twenty-five others, bent over his history project.  The duty prefect, Michael Stafford, a much older boy than most of them, with a grave, acne-scarred face and bloodhound’s eyes behind tortoise-shell glasses, sat facing them on a dais at the front, doing his own ‘prep,’ but keeping a wary eye on his underlings, alert for furtively passed written notes, or hissed conversations behind the backs of hands.

            Trying to concentrate, Kevin dipped his nib in the inkwell and wrote: “Hengist and Horsa were the leaders of the Jutes, who landed in England at Ebbsfleet, Kent, in AD 449. Horsa was killed in battle around AD 455, but Hengist, his brother, went on to rule South Britain . . .”

            Outside, wind-driven rain beat on the classroom windows, but Kevin still heard the approaching footsteps on the gravel, and tensed when the messenger entered. The whispered conversation was longer than usual, and Stafford was making a penciled note of the names.

            A minute or two passed after the messenger left the room.  Wasn’t Stafford going to call anyone?  But when he did look up and speak it was not Kevin’s surname he called, but someone else’s.

            “Griffiths.”

            David Griffiths, known as ‘Scruffy,’ looked up, an unkempt, curly-headed boy with a distinct Welsh accent, who always looked as though he slept in his crumpled school uniform.

 “Yes, Stafford?”

            “Mr. Evans wants to see you.”

            Friends exchanged amused glances, and exaggerated coughing broke out around the room.  Scruffy, always in trouble, was called to Mr. Evans’ study on several Tuesday nights each term. The misdemeanors for which he was about to receive four strokes of the cane would, everyone in the room knew, be much the same as they always had been: thirty minutes detention for an untidy locker; another thirty for an unlaced shoe at morning chapel; another for forgetting to bring his French dictionary. For Scruffy Griffiths, like everyone else, an accumulation of ninety or more minutes of detention in a single week meant a beating. Punishments of six strokes were kept for more venal sins: a lie; a swear word, or damage to school property. 

            Scruffy stood up with a sudden jerky movement, his chair making a harsh scraping sound as he pushed it back on the wood-block floor. So Kevin wasn’t going to be first? Somehow that made the ordeal harder to bear. He’d now have to wait, pondering what was to come while the other boy walked over to Mr. Evans’ house, took what was coming to him, and returned to the classroom. If he knew Scruffy, he’d be blubbering when he came back and took his seat. 

Kevin listened as Griffiths’s unhurried footsteps passed the window. Then nearly ten minutes dragged by. When he returned he wasn’t crying after all, though his eyes were swollen and his face flushed.

            On the dais, Stafford consulted the scribbled note beside him.         

“Fitzgerald.”

            Kevin swallowed. “Yes, Stafford?”

            “Mr. Evans wants to see you.”

              There were a few wry grins around the homework room, but otherwise there was less reaction than when Griffiths had been summoned. Unlike Scruffy, Kevin was not the butt of the jokes and jibes the Welsh boy endured. Kevin rarely if ever found the legs of his pajama pants tied in knots in the dormitory, his bicycle tires deflated, or his toothbrush clogged with carbolic soap.

            Out in the corridor, passing empty, darkened classrooms, he stepped into the wind outside, pulling up his collar against the rain. At the bottom of the parade ground, across the street behind tall, dim street lamps, stood Crowden House, Mr. Evans’ house, with its high, leaded gable windows. The building was totally dark, and yet the front door was wide open.  But Kevin was not allowed to enter through this door, because it was only for the use of Mr.Evans and his monitors, and visiting parents.  Kevin and others, the hoi polloi of Crowden House, went in and out of the building only by its back door. He climbed the stone steps and through the shadowy changing rooms, with their overloaded clothes hooks, draped with muddy Rugby shirts and shorts and grubby towels, past the boot lockers, the echoing white-tiled bath and shower rooms, to Mr. Evans’ oak study door.

            Kevin knocked. There was a chink of light under the door. Beyond it he heard Evans cough. A smoker’s cough.

            “Enter.”

            The housemaster’s study reeked of pipe tobacco. Evans sat upright, reading a book in a shiny brown leather armchair in front of a hissing gas stove, seeming not to notice Kevin’s entrance.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

            Evans looked up feigning surprise, and eased himself out of his chair. He was an immensely tall man with drooping shoulders, an ivory white face, a beaky nose and mournful eyes. In the school library there was a life-sized marble bust of a lesser Roman emperor that bore a remarkable resemblance to him.

“Yes, Fitzgerald. I did indeed. And I expect you can imagine why.”

            Kevin shrugged. “No Sir. I can’t,” he said.

            “I think you can, boy. Reflect on it.”

            Kevin reflected.

            “It’s . . . is it because I’ve gone over ninety minutes this week, sir?”

            “Precisely. And what does that mean to you and me, Fitzgerald?”

            “That you’re going to beat me, Sir.”

            Mr. Evans smiled. But the smile was only on his thin lips. There was no warmth or friendliness in his sad eyes.

            “Exactly right.” Evans opened a closet door beside the fireplace that seemed to overflow with sports equipment. A golf bag, cricket bats, tennis racquets, hockey sticks. Reaching in behind these he drew out a long, thin bamboo cane.

“Alright, then,” Evans said, “I’ll meet you in the common room. You’ll find the chair down there somewhere.”

            Outside the housemaster’s door, Kevin groped his way along the darkened corridor. In the common room he switched on the lights and gazed round the big, dingy hall. On two unvarnished wood tables lay the disordered remains of the day’s newspapers. Around the room, against the walls, stood some forty upright wooden chairs. At the far end was a worn billiards table.

            And in the middle of the common room, standing alone was a single chair quite different from the others. It had a circular plywood seat on four spindly legs, and it’s back was made of two pieces of brown-varnished doweling, secured to the seat in an inverted U-shape. 

            “Well, we’ve been here a few times before together, haven’t we Fitzgerald?” said Evans, standing in the doorway.

Kevin stood by the chair, with one hand resting on the curve of its back. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s better. Now take your position, if you will.” He closed the door behind him.

Kevin knew what he had to do. Turning his back to Evans, he faced the chair, grasped its seat with both hands, lowered his head and locked his neck under its curved cane back. Behind him, Evans made swishing practice strokes in the air with his cane with the nonchalance of a Sunday morning golfer.

Bent over in this strained position, Kevin’s back hurt. Why didn’t the bastard get on with it?

“Are you ready, boy?”

“Ready, sir.”

Kevin tightened his buttocks, bit his lip and held his breath. But Evans seemed not to be ready. Kevin could hear him pacing the floor behind him, and involuntarily relaxed a little.

Facing the floor, his head clamped under the chair back, Kevin looked down at the linoleum two feet below. What was that by the leg of the chair? An old sneaker. What was that doing here?

It was at that moment, while Kevin was off-guard and his muscles not tightened in readiness, that the first stroke fell. It cut across both buttocks, perfectly parallel. It didn’t hurt so much as it numbed him. This wasn’t too bad, he thought. He could take this.

            Evans has stepped back a few paces, and as he did so made a few more switches in the air. Nothing happened for a few moments and Kevin lowered his head a little, withdrew it from the chair back, and half turned to look at his housemaster. Evans was standing maybe eight feet behind him, immobile, the cane lowered in his right hand. His eyes seemed to be on Kevin’s buttocks, and he’d have been hard-pressed to interpret the distracted look in the man’s eyes.

“Look to your front,” Evans snapped.

            Kevin took a firmer grasp on the chair seat and squeezed the cheeks of his bottom together as tightly as he could. He heard the little run as Evans approached and the second stroke came slashing in. His body jerked upward with pain, jolting the back of his head against its wooden restraint. Tears welled into his eyes. He braced himself for the third stroke, and it came quickly, this time at a sharp slashing angle to the first two strokes. His feet twisted and his toes curled downward in reaction to the pain. One more, only one more.

            There was another long pause. He could hear Evans walking farther away this time, making little wheezing, breathless sounds between his teeth. Kevin tensed again, and heard the four quickening paces as he braced every muscle in his body, his head stiff-necked, twisting sideways, his jaw locked.

            So great was the force of the fourth, final stroke that Kevin stumbled forward a pace, his head still locked. He stood upright, lifting the chair off the floor, and raised it a little to disentangle his head. Then he lowered it to the ground and turned toward his housemaster.

            By now his eyes were so full of tears that he could barely see Evans. He wiped his eyes with a sleeve of his shirt. Evans said nothing.   

            “Can I go now, sir?”

Evens looked down. “The question’s not whether you can go, Fitzgerald. It’s whether you may go.”

“May I go, sir?”

“Indeed you may.”

Kevin made for the door.

“Fitzgerald.”

Kevin turned. “Sir?”

“Good man. Well taken.”  He was smiling. The man was smiling!

“Thank you. Sir.”

            Outside, in the darkness of the changing rooms, he loosened his belt and slipped his hand down the inside of the back of his undershorts. He felt the four tender lines, not yet swollen into weals and, where the strokes had crossed, the smallest sticky trace of blood on his fingertips. He withdrew his hand, sucking the rich, iron-tasting blood from his fingertips.

            On his way back to the classroom, on the edge of the parade ground, he passed the lighted red telephone booth on the sidewalk. Feeling in his pocket he took out a florin, hauled open the heavy door, slipped inside and dropped the coin into the slot. He dialed his parents’ number.

            They often had dinner parties on Tuesday nights, but he was sure they wouldn’t mind. He thought of his mother and father at either end of the table in the warm, dark paneled dining room, their faces and those of their guests lit by the three candelabra. 

            It was cold in the phone booth, and there was a smell of stale tobacco smoke. His mother answered the phone. He’d hoped she would.

“Faversham 783”

“Hello, Mummy.”

“Oh, It’s my birthday boy. Happy birthday, Kevin, dear. Did you have a nice day?”

            “Not bad.”

            In the background he heard a roar of laughter, and his mother said, “I can’t talk too long Kevin. We have people to dinner.”

            “That’s all right,” the boy said.

            “Oh, by the way,” his mother said, “I’m afraid your card and present will be a day or two late. I only remembered to post them this morning. But don’t worry; it’s on the way. Really.”

            “That’s okay. It’s doesn’t matter. I expect it’ll come tomorrow.”

            There was a pause, then his mother said: “Well, I must go now, dear. Daddy sends his love, too. You’re all right then, are you?

            “Yes, Mummy, I’m fine.”

            “That’s all right then. Kiss kiss.”

            “Mummy, I . . .”

            “What’s that, dear?”

            Was there any point? “Nothing, Mummy. It’s nothing.”

            “Bye then.”

            A hundred and thirty miles away the line went dead.

            He was limping a little, and it hurt, but it would soon be all right again. Everything worked out all right in the end.

            In the classroom, waiting his return, they heard his footsteps on the gravel.

end

           

           

A TASTE OF SHERRI

London 1961

"You’ll like Sherri," Patrick said, “she's a real looker."

Nigel smiled. “Stunning, I saw that picture of her in Advertiser’s Weekly a couple of days ago after she won a Marconi for the best TV commercials."

 "Yeah, she produced and directed 'em. That’s what she does." Patrick gestured to a chair. "Sit down for a minute, will you?”

Nigel liked his boss, an earthy Aussie who’d been news editor of the Sydney Morning Herald back home before a long, successful stint as a big wheel on the foreign desk of the Daily Express in London. Nigel had been a trainee at Patrick McClusky’s public relations firm since his boss left newspapers to set up his own PR shop two years earlier. He’d taught Nigel a lot in that time, and this was to be his first day as a full-fledged account executive.

“So what’s my role?” Nigel asked.

“Your role? You’re it, mate. It’ll be your own show. Go meet her, chat her up, write the pitch and manage the account. It’s an ideal little account for your first solo flight?”

This would be a cake walk compared with some of the big name accounts on which Nigel had been helping his more experienced colleagues – Shell, Guinness, Seiko, The London Tourist Board. And they were going to let him run this one on his own.

“Any stuff on file about her?” Nigel asked.

“Yeah, lots.” Patrick pushed a wad of paper across the desk. “I spent an hour with her last week. I’ve had it typed up, plus a few clippings from Ad Weekly and some other trades. Read those and you’ll know all you need to know before you see her.”

Nigel stood up to leave. “Thanks, Patrick, I appreciate it.”

“You’re a good bloke, Nige, and you do great work. And I’ll tell you this, you’re a lucky bastard. That woman’s a peach!”

Back in his office, Nigel's neighbor, Trish, asked “What did Pat want?”

“New biz prospect. Woman called Sherri Beresford. She directs TV commercials  . . . wants to be famous.”

“Sherri, Beresford, eh? Jeez, who’s taking that on?”

“Me,” Nigel said with a little surge of pride.

Tricia screwed up her face. “My! Aren’t you the lucky one?  I’d have thought that woman was getting enough publicity without any help from us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t you read the gossip columns, the scandal sheets in the tabloids. She’s quite a girl if it’s all true – sort of a cross between Joan Collins and Mata Hari.”

Nigel laughed. “You’re in the PR business, Trish! And you’re saying ‘it must be true, it’s in the papers’? Get real!”

He opened the first folder and began reading. Patrick had done his homework. He’d looked up Sherri Beresford in several sources, even Who’s Who. She was born in 1920, which would make her forty. She was raised in a small coal-mining town near Newcastle. Just before the War she’d been a fashion model in London, and then joined-up as an aircraft-woman in the 40s.  While in the WRAF she met Air Vice Marshall Sir Humphrey Beresford, and they were married in 1946. Her husband was her senior by eighteen years. There were no children, and a news clip from the News of the World and weeklies of that ilk hinted that the marriage hadn’t entirely been made in heaven.

Patrick’s typewritten notes revealed that Sherri had broken new ground making commercials. They featured popular TV and film actors, rather than unknown hams playing housewives gushing about shampoos, cake mixes and vacuum cleaners.  The client’s sales had soared. Now she was about to set up Beresford Productions, and needed the help of PR professionals.

Nigel called Sherri Beresford. An elderly man answered the phone. He didn’t sound like Sir Humphrey, but some kind of servant.

“Whom shall I say is calling, sir?”

“Nigel Baxter, from McClusky Communications.”

It was a while before Nigel heard the languid click of heels on marble.

“Hello.”

“Lady Beresford?”

“This is she.”

“I’m Nigel Beresford, Patrick McClusky’s colleague.”

“Oh! Mr. Baxter, I thought the butler said it was someone else. Yes, this is Sherri Beresford. Mr. McClusky’s told me so much about you!  In fact he’s full of praise for you.”

Nigel swallowed. He hadn’t expected such instant cordiality.

“That’s very kind of him,” he said, “I’m calling to make an appointment for our first meeting.”

 Her voice had a smoky resonance.  “Splendid. Well now, let’s see. I’ve got an appointment at the Film Producer’s Guild all afternoon today. I’d ask you for dinner tonight but I’m going to a party. What a pity!  How about first thing tomorrow morning?”

“That’ll be fine, Lady Beresford. Would nine o’clock suit you?”

“Perfect. Mr. McClusky also says you’re awfully handsome. I can’t wait to meet you!”

        

Next morning, Nigel took a cab to Lady Beresford’s house in Eaton Square and arrived sharp at nine. It was an imposing and meticulously kept place. Up in a big second floor window, a slim woman in pink looked out over the gardens in the middle of the square, and seemed not to notice him when he paid the driver and headed for the door.

Inside, the butler led him up a sweeping marble staircase. On the landing was a tall, ornate double door. The butler knocked lightly.

“Come!”

“Mr. Baxter, Ma’am.”

Nigel walked in, and heard the door click shut behind him.

He couldn’t have guessed what Lady Beresford might be wearing, but it certainly wouldn’t have expected what he now saw.

As far ago as his schooldays at Harrow, Nigel had known he could be rendered speechless and almost hypnotized by a beautiful girl. He remembered how, on occasions, he’d been in a state of shock at  parties and debutante balls.

But Sherri Beresford was no girl. She glided towards him in a robe of pink silk that was only loosely tied round her slim waist by a woven gold cord. Under the robe she wore a full length, all but transparent nightdress.

“Hello, Nigel,” she said.

Nigel had seen scores of beautiful girls and women in his twenty-four years, first during vacations from his boarding school, then at Oxford, and in his first two years at McClusky’s. But Sherri Beresford eclipsed them all.  Although she was nearly twenty years his senior – or maybe because of it – he was mesmerized.  It wasn’t just her liquid blue eyes, her leonine head of auburn hair and her uninhibitedly displayed bosom, but a combination of these and other things. When she smiled, her full lips had the slightest hint of lasciviousness, and her sheer sophistication and self-confidence totally disarmed him.

Gently she took his hand, leading him into the big room. “You must forgive me for being dressed like this,” she said, “I overslept, you see? I was at a dinner party last night, and didn’t get to bed until past three.”

Nigel mumbled something inaudible about it not mattering.

The room was lavishly furnished in French Empire style, and what looked like a portrait by Gainsborough hung over a huge marble fireplace. A movie screen and a projector had been set up.

While a maid poured coffee, Nigel managed to recover his composure.

“Oh, so you’re going to show me your commercials, Lady Beresford,” he began, but she interrupted him.

“No, no, Nigel! Please just call me Sherri.”

“Oh, right – um – Sherri. Let’s see the films first. Then we’ll talk about your plans, and what you hope we can do for you. We’ll agree some objectives. Then, in the next day or two we’ll send you a written proposal.”

“Fine,” Sherri said. She pressed a bell push, and within seconds a manservant appeared through a side door.

“This is Perkins,” she said. “He knows how to work this projecting machine thing, don’t you, Perkins?”

“Indeed, Ma’am.”

She eased herself into a love seat next to the projector and, smiling, patted the narrow space next to her. “Now, come here and sit by me, and we’ll go to the pictures!”

Nigel took his seat beside her, sensing the growing warmth of her thigh against his, and inhaling her heavy perfume. She may have been forty, Nigel thought, but even as close as this she was ravishing.  The lights went down and, with the heavy drapes that Perkins had drawn over the tall windows, they were momentarily in darkness.

“Isn’t this fun?” she whispered. She elbowed him with a breathy little giggle, and her lips were so close to his ear that it made him shiver.

There were three short films, each produced for a different client. Each was a little masterpiece, quite unlike anything he’d ever seen before. There was no hard sell, the photography was startlingly imaginative, and the characters convincing.

The lights went up. Sherri turned and gazed into his eyes.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked.

“They’re unique,” Nigel said. “I’m not surprised you won this year’s Marconi.”

“Thank you!” She rested a warm hand on his knee, and squeezed it lightly.

Disturbed by Sherri’s apparent inability to stop touching him, he repositioned himself on a nearby couch, but within minutes she had slipped beside him again. For the next hour they talked, and the elements of an action plan began to form in his head, so that when Sherri said, “Do you already have a rough idea of what you can do for me?” he was ready.

“Well, there’s no doubt your key audience must be creatives in advertising agencies across the country,” Nigel began. “The strategy will be about finding events and opportunities to show you and your work.”

Sherri’s eyes had been so fixed on his that he wasn’t sure she was listening. But then she asked, “So how will you do that, exactly?

“Well, my colleagues and I must thrash that out, but there’ll be several ways. One would be by helping you write regular features about how you make commercials, and we’d place them in leading advertising trade weeklies and monthlies. But above all – ”  Nigel felt the blood rush to his face, “ – since you’re, well, such a magnetic and attractive personality, we’d find you audiences to address at events such as the annual convention of the Advertising Association and other national and regional get-togethers.  But there’s a lot of other things we can do.”

Sherri took his hand and intertwined her fingers with his.

 “What a sweet thing to say! Do you really find me magnetic and attractive?” But he was lost for words, and cursed himself for having been so fulsome.

When the meeting was over, she led him down the marble staircase to the front door, her arm locked in his.

“You know, Nigel,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I think we’re going to become really good friends.”

Back in his office, Nigel wrote a proposal, calculated a budget, checked it with Patrick, and sent it by messenger to Sherri Beresford.

She called him first thing next morning. “I’m on, Nigel, dear,” she said. “You’ve done a lovely job. But then I knew you would. Let’s start right away. Listen, I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go ahead,” Nigel said.

“I see you recommend a day’s training in public speaking,” she said. “Well, I’m making a big presentation at the Northern Focus conference next week on Wednesday. Pretty well every significant advertising agency in the North and Midlands will be there.  Can you set up your training session this week?”

“No problem, all we need is six clear hours and a big room. Can you keep all day Friday free?”

“Yes,” she said, “if I move a few other dates around. By the way, my session’s at ten in the morning, so I’m staying up in York for the convention. I’d be lost if you weren’t there to encourage me. Please say you’ll come, and will you book rooms for us on the Tuesday night at the Royal York?”

On Friday, the training session – run by an outside specialist – went well. Sherri was a natural. She was articulate and relaxed, and handled her slides like a veteran. The trainer called in a dozen of Nigel’s colleagues, and they barraged her with tricky questions. Her responses were masterful, and she seemed ready for anything. During the following Monday and Tuesday not many hours passed without her calling him for the lamest of reasons, and Nigel asked himself whether most of her calls were remotely necessary.

Alone on the train to York, he was deeply disturbed, and couldn’t get Sherri out of his mind. The relationship was getting far too intimate.  He found her alluring, and tantalizingly seductive, and had to admit that she was the most entrancing woman he’d ever met. However, she was married, and more importantly, so was he. Lisa, his wife of just a year, was in her third trimester with their first child, and he suddenly felt deeply ashamed that, if only in his mind, he’d just compared Lisa less favorably with this woman.

But then, hadn’t his behavior been beyond reproach? He’d never once responded to her blandishments. Also troubling him was the question of professional ethics. Think of the shame, the dishonor, of not just committing adultery, but with a client!  Lisa’s pregnancy had been an endangered one for several months, and his physical frustration was by now barely tolerable. Whatever the provocation, he told himself, he must never let anything happen. He’d taken the first preventive step when Sherri had called to suggest her chauffeur should drive them both to York in her car, and she’d seemed quite upset when he’d concocted a plausible excuse to take the train instead.

It was still light when he checked in at the hotel, an hour before Sherri said she planned to arrive.

“The name’s Baxter,” he told the receptionist. “Nigel Baxter, and there’s a reservation for me and my client, Lady Beresford.”

“Oh yes,” Mr. Baxter, we’ve got you both here. Actually, Lady Beresford called us only this morning.”

“She did?”

“Yes, she asked for adjoining rooms. She said you’d be doing some homework together tonight. Something like that. Anyway, you’re in 702, and she’ll be in 704.”

My God, he thought, she’s closing in.

In his room, Nigel turned on the television, hoping for some distraction from his growing anxiety about Sherri Beresford’s impending arrival. But nothing could hold his attention, and he turned it off.

Now he was certain of her intentions. Hour by hour since they’d met,  she’d deliberately wound up the tension. It had been an insidious step-by-step process, beginning with a harmless touch of the hand that later became a more prolonged fondling, leading to stroking and even more intimate gestures. Her body language had changed, too, with that breathy whispering in his ear, the steady, searching gaze of her blue eyes, and her ability to position her body and face enticingly close to his, making his heart pound and his blood flow faster.

So now she’d arranged adjoining rooms? What else could he deduce than that she was hell bent on enticing him into her bed?  Good God. He was shocked that, while his first thoughts were about his young wife and their unborn child, the prospect of making love to this beguiling woman both thrilled and terrified him.

There was the connecting door, bolted on his side, and he had a sudden, uncontrollable urge to see what was beyond it. With the slow-motion care of a cat burglar he slid back the brass bolt and drew the door open. Inside was another door, with no bolt on his side. He took a deep breath and turned the knob, but it didn’t budge.  

He jumped when the phone rang, quickly closed his door and bolted it.

“Nigel, darling. It’s me.”

“Hello, how was your drive up?”

“Fine, but I’m thirsty. Come down to the bar and buy me a drink.”

“Good idea. I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”

He checked his hair in the bathroom mirror. Then, for reasons he couldn’t have explained to himself, he brushed his teeth and put on a dab of the expensive after-shave that, he reminded himself, was a gift from his wife. In the elevator he realized that he was humming a tune to himself, something he only did when he was nervous, excited or on edge.

She was perched on a bar stool, and when he had eased himself onto another beside her, she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Oooh! You smell delicious,” she said. “I’ve been dying to see you. I’m afraid I’ve already got myself a drink. This is a martini – it’s good. Why don’t you have one?”

Anxious to stay in control of himself,  Nigel ordered a glass of wine. Sherri was in a short black dress, with a single string of pearls. Her neckline was invitingly low. He raised his glass and touched hers. “To success,” he said, and added, “Not that you need any, of course. You’ll be just fine.”

Sherri put down her drink, leaned over and laid her hands on his thighs. “Oh, but I do need it. I’m petrified. I’m going to lean on you heavily for moral support.”

Nigel had begun asking the barman to keep a table for dinner in the restaurant when Sherri announced that she had a better idea.

“I know the sweetest little place in a village a few miles down the road. You’ll just love it.  Actually, I’ve asked my chauffeur to get us a table there. He’ll be outside at 7:45.”

The restaurant was in a 14^th Century inn called The Stag at Bay, and they were led up to a quiet room with only a few other diners. When their main course arrived, Nigel noted that, while Sherri had drunk two martinis back at the hotel, she’d had two more here.

The meal was exquisite, and they talked together for more than two hours. During that time, Nigel and Sherri shared a bottle of Pinot Noir, some vintage port, their life stories and a few of their innermost thoughts. During the drive back to the hotel, Sherri, sitting very close to him, laid her head on his shoulder, took his hand in her lap, and said absolutely nothing. Nigel couldn’t help wondering whether the chauffeur could see them in his mirror.

In the elevator to the seventh floor she put both arms round his waist and pressed her body against his. “Why don’t you come in for a nightcap?” she whispered, “We can raid my mini-bar.”

Taking his face in both hands, she kissed him on the mouth with moist, parted lips. Nigel was dumbfounded, overwhelmed by a tidal wave of desire. Then they were at her door, and he had still not mustered a reply. Now her face was earnest, her eyes pleading.

“Please, Nigel, dear! You’ll never regret it, I swear.”

This was the moment of decision. He reached out to her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. 

“Sherri,” he said. “You’re the most enthralling woman, and I’m, well, flattered. But, forgive me,  I . . . I  just can’t bring myself to do this.”

In a few seconds she had become a different person. The curl of her lips made her ugly, and he hadn’t seen this expression on her face before.

“I can’t believe this. Are you a man, or what? How can you do this to me?”

“We’re married, Sherri – we’re both married! And, damn it, you’re my client. How could I possibly – ”

“ No, you listen to me, who the hell would ever have known, for Chrissake?”

She had put the key in the door and now turned it. In a second she was gone.

When Nigel woke the next morning, his mind flooded with dread at the memory of the night before. Downstairs at breakfast, Sherri Beresford was coolly formal, and he soon realized that he’d be the only initiator of any words between them in the morning ahead. Neither spoke in the car on their way across the city to the conference center. Sherri’s speech at the conference was electrifying and inspiring, and closed to thunderous applause. In the afternoon they parted with an awkward, wordless handshake.

Nigel was back at his desk in London around four that afternoon when the intercom buzzed. 

It was Patrick McCluskey’s voice. “Busy, Nige?"

"I’ll be right in.”

Patrick was at his desk, his shirt sleeves rolled up, drinking his third cup of tea since lunch, and lighting his umpteenth cigarette.

"Have a chair, sport."

Patrick wasn’t his usual cheery self. Something was clearly up.

"How's the Beresford thing going?"  he asked.

There seemed no point in pretending. “Not good, Patrick. In fact it’s a bloody catastrophe.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow, “What’s up, then?”

“You may find this hard to believe,” Nigel said, “but she’s got the hots for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s a vamp, Patrick, a femme fatale.  I’m not kidding. She can’t keep her hands off me, and she actually propositioned me in York last night.”

Patrick didn't respond, leaned back in his chair and heaved his feet up on his desk.

"Listen, kid . . ." He paused, gathering his words.  "You won't like this, but I won't give you any bullshit. She called me an hour ago. She wants you off the account."

"For what reason?"

"Don't take it too hard, Nige. She said you don’t have enough experience for the job.”

Nigel smiled wryly.  Experience, was it?  He knew the sort of experience she'd found him lacking.  It was tough, but he'd let it go, and good luck to the next poor devil.

As Nigel rose to leave, Patrick said, "Cheer up, mate.  These things happen.  You've got a good bunch of other accounts to work on, and you do a bloody good job.  Forget about it."

At the door, Nigel turned back. "So who’ll take the account over?"

McCluskey shrugged. "Good question. I'm wondering about that.”

"How about Trish?" Nigel asked, “maybe she could handle it.”

"Well, yeah, a woman might work, but, you know . . . “ He paused. “I think I might give this account some attention myself."

A sly smile appeared on Patrick’s face that Nigel couldn’t quite interpret. And could that have been a sly wink?

E n d

RESURRECTING THE GLOBE

The story about Sam Wanamaker's 27-year battle to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe theater in London more than 400 years after it was closed down by order of Oliver Cromwell's Puritan government. 

Imagine this: it’s three o'clock on a blazing hot August afternoon, and we're in London, in a theater perched on the edge of a murky river Thames, and the place is jam-packed.  Up on the stage they're near the end of a performance of Julius Caesar, and the evil Cassius is face-to-face in the dead of night with the ghost of the slain emperor:

“Who comes there? I think it is the weakness of mine eyes that shapes this monstrous apparition. It comes upon me. Art thou any thing? Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil, that mak’st my blood run cold . . .”

        

Spellbinding, isn’t it?   But there’s something strange going on.  Who are those rowdy, rough looking people milling around in front of the stage, their heads level with the actors’ feet.  A while ago one of them grabbed Brutus’s sandaled foot when he was in full stride! They’re a boisterous mob. They cheered Caesar when he first came on, and they tossed tomatoes at Brutus. It’s quite a spectacle!

         If you think that’s odd, look around you. Other things don’t ring true; the audience is all done up in Elizabethan dress!  And why are Caesar and Brutus’s wives, Calphurnia and Portia, being played by teenage boys? Why are there no women actors? And yuk! This is disgusting, there’s an ammonia-like stench seeping out of our neighbors sitting on these hard wooden benches.  It's as though nobody’s had a bath for weeks, months, even.  And there, at the foot of the stage, is that man really peeing on the floor?  Yes, by God, he is!

         The theater itself is unusual yet attractive. The building seems circular, but if you look more carefully you’ll see it really has twenty sides.  About three-quarters of the thatched-roofed circle have three stories of oak benches, all facing inwards.  And in the heart of it all there's a big space open to the sky that lets in the daylight and London’s much maligned weather, not to mention one or two pigeons and sparrows.

         Out into this open space juts the stage, big, more than forty feet wide.  The theater’s roof, supported by stout columns, at least protect the actors from the elements.  In the rest of the sunlit open area, on the three sides of the stage, and with no seating at all, are all these noisy, unruly people. There must be several hundred of them.

         So what's going on?  You’ve probably guessed what’s going on.  The truth is that we're back in time, and the year is 1599.  This is The Globe, the very cradle of world theater, on whose stage many of Shakespeare's plays – and those of many others – were seen for the first time.  Little does this crowd know that, fourteen years from now, during a spirited production of Henry V, a cannon will be fired to mark the king’s entrance, and a shower of sparks will set the theater’s thatched roof ablaze and destroy the place in little more than an hour. The Globe was rebuilt, and performances continued until 1642, when Oliver Cromwell’s burgeoning Puritans, who thought theater to be immoral and blasphemous, closed down every theater in England.  Two years later the site was leveled and tenement housing rose in its place.  And Londoners, aware neither of Shakespeare's greatness nor of his legacy to literature, forgot about The Globe and left no monument, stone or other mark of its fame or its existence.

         Or so it seemed. But 300 or so years later, in 1945, there was a sudden glimmer of hope that The Globe might be brought back to life. American actor-director Sam Wanamaker was on a working visit to London and took an hour or two off to search the south bank of the Thames for such a memorial.  There, on the actual site of the long defunct theater he found a blackened, neglected bronze plaque on a brewery wall.

         Over the years, Sam Wanamaker and his friends claimed that Shakespeare’s historic theater deserved more worthy recognition, and it was more than a dozen years before he came up with an inspired idea.  Suppose he could raise enough money to rebuild the theater on its original site, exactly as it was in the 1500s, built by master craftsmen using the same materials? No nails or screws please, but real joinery, with good old Elizabethan doweling. And suppose there were buildings nearby housing an education and a theatrical research center, with an exhibition, together with a movie theater, an Elizabethan tavern, car parks, and apartments for the people who’d staff these places?  Now, there would be a worthy commemoration of the man, his work and his theater!

         But Sam soon found that the stuffy, conservative British establishment was skeptical of his ambitious plan, believing the theater would turn out to be a flashy tourist attraction. Partly to overcome this, with the help of Diana Devlin, a noted drama academic, he began to promote his vision to the British public, and in the U.S.  In 1972 (all of twenty-seven years after he found that bronze plaque on the bank of the Thames) he staged Hamlet with a cast of talented actors in a rough and ready canvas and scaffolding auditorium near the original site of The Globe.  I was there, and it was a boldly avant-garde production, and some thought it too much so. In the play, the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern roared into Elsinore on motorbikes in black leather gear; old Polonius, from behind the arras, used a tape recorder while spying on Hamlet's conversation with his mother in her bedroom.  And in the final, murderous fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, the points were lit up on a garish digital neon scoreboard.

         Though the show certainly started people talking about Sam, the production may have done his venture more harm than good. It played into the hands of his many critics, those modern day Puritans who already believed his plan was to create a Disney-like commercial showplace. And dammit, wasn’t this fellow an American? The British media were scornful and academics, to whom Shakespeare was deadly earnest stuff, questioned his gravity and integrity. Truth be told, this first attempt failed to explain his brilliant concept to the skeptical Brits.

         One year after the Hamlet production, Sam tried again, presenting a less sensational production of Anthony and Cleopatra on the same site, in which Vanessa Redgrave played the lead.  This, too, was a failure, but for no fault of the now desperate Sam Wanamaker. Heavy rains flooded the makeshift theater, and the play was taken off well before the end of its season.  By this time The Globe Playhouse Trust, which Sam had set up to raise funds, had become insolvent.  The public hadn't taken Sam seriously, and an ill wisher warned Diana Devlin, "Working for Sam, you will have to prepare large quantities of ready mixed concrete to support his castles in the air.  And he won't have the money to pay for the concrete . . . "

         But Sam, seen by many as a willful and difficult man, was not ready to give up, and each obstacle he confronted only seemed to strengthen his resolve.

What his opponents never understood was that this was, for him, no mere business venture. It was a passionate one-man crusade to recreate not only a thriving Elizabethan theater, but also an educational center that would enable tens of thousands of adults and children to study drama, and to learn what it’s like to produce and act a play on The Globe’s unique stage. This side of the hoped-for enterprise, Globe Education, would offer a remarkably wide range of workshops, courses, lectures, on-stage readings, and even distance learning programs.

After the failure of Anthony & Cleopatra, Sam already faced a loss of £50,000 ($80,000). In the next year he lost more, and in the next more again.  The ultimate blow came when the British government, itself in financial trouble, withdrew its annual grants of £37,000 ($60,000).

Six more years passed, while Sam’s plan lay dormant, and in 1982 he made a radical change of strategy.  If Britain was unprepared to fund a living memorial to its greatest literary figure, he argued, why not turn to America for the lion’s share of the money?  At home several years earlier he had set up the Shakespeare Globe Center (ISGC) in Chicago, an education and research body to study practices in 16th Century Shakespearean theater, and at the old Globe. Now, with help from mostly volunteer sources, he set up a flagship headquarters for the center in New York, and created several more across the country and in Canada. As a sort of parent to the SGC he registered an umbrella organization called the International Shakespeare Globe Center (ISGC). Artfully, he gave this a set of broad, non-commercial sounding aims, including “to improve . . . understanding of Shakespeare, both in performance and education.”

He then made an inspired choice. He persuaded Armand Hammer, the internationally known, egocentric oil billionaire, to become the nominal head of ISGC in New York. After nearly two decades of failure and disappointment, Sam and his supporters experienced a fresh upsurge of hope.  Hammer gave a considerable sum of money to the new organization, and his name alone lent the plan both the legitimacy it needed, winning the support of a significant number of the tycoon’s friends and corporate leaders. Soon afterward, ISGC mounted a ten-city fund-raising tour in America and Canada that not only raised enthusiastic financial support but also created awareness of the Globe concept.

But there were more dark clouds ahead.  A clause in Sam's contract with the landowners and the local town council for lease of the proposed Globe site had ordained that, if no building work had begun within two years, the agreement would become null and void. So when problems pushed the building schedule beyond that time, the deal fell apart in 1984. Quickly, Armand Hammer, a shrewd businessman and money manager, withdrew his active support from the plan, though he did agree to remain ISGC’s titular head. 

Smarting from Hammer’s withdrawal, and infuriated by what he saw as a breach of contract, Sam sued the landowners and the borough of Southwark in London’s High Court, and the case lingered, wasting valuable time. But when the judge handed down his decision he ordered Southwark to pay ISGC £9 m). ($14 m.)

It looked as though the Globe plan was saved again. Flushed with confidence, Sam Wanamaker planned an International Shakespeare Week in Britain, which he conceived as a £16 million fund-raising campaign.  However, after fewer than 1000 people took part compared with his estimated 20,000, the event ended with a net loss of £47,000 ($75,000). Fortunately, by this time Sam had won the hearts of a good proportion of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars.  His tireless efforts, from international music concert tours and educational events to corporate and private sponsorship opportunities, had raised enough capital at least to begin work in earnest. From here on, Sam decided, he would fund a single segment of the theater at a time, cross his fingers and pray that money would come in bit by bit. A major morale booster was the fact that the Royal Family was taking an interest, and that Prince Philip had agreed to be the theater's patron, and be present at ceremonies to mark various stages in the theater’s construction.

On July 16, 1988, Shakespeare's birthday, Sam and his devotees celebrated the official start of work, during which actress Judi Dench donned a yellow hard hat and drove a bulldozer.  In the following year the theater's foundations were completed. Progress was slow, but over the next five years the new Globe became an intriguing and much talked-about feature on the Thames bank. At last, everything was looking good.

And then, five years later in 1993, the unimaginable happened. Sam Wanamaker died of cancer at the age of 74, three and a half years before the curtain would rise for The Globe's first full season. But by then he was vindicated, and assured that the highs and elation of his 25 year crusade had been worth the abject lows of rejection and disappointment. Only seven months later, his chief architect and close friend, Theo Crosby, died. He, too, did not live to see the theater’s first performance. Nor did Sam’s wife, Charlotte, who also died only months before the opening ceremony.

But Sam and Charlotte were high in the audience’s minds at The Globe’s final opening ceremony in June,1997. Zoë Wanamaker, their daughter, watched by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, stepped onto the stage and spoke the lines from the Prologue to Henry V:

         O! For a Muse of fire, that would ascend    

         The brightest heaven of invention:

         A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

         And monarchs to behold the swelling scene  . . .

 It wasn’t only the building materials – English oak, thatch from the county of Norfolk and plaster mixed with goat hair – that are identical to those in the original theater. The new Globe presents its plays in much the way it did in the late 1500s. There are no stage sets, no special décor, no microphones and no spotlights. Since performances are mostly held in daylight, the actors, never more than sixty-six feet from anyone in the auditorium, can see the faces of everyone in the audience, and interact with them. Remember that wild mob that was free to roam in the seat-less area around the stage? These were “the groundlings,” poorer citizens, sailors home from the sea and mostly illiterates, who came to the theater as a change from nearby entertainments such as bearbaiting and cockfights. There are still groundlings today, who pay only £5 ($8.00) for a ticket. Though better heeled, more educated and far better behaved, they can still get pretty rowdy and boisterous during performances.

Sam Wanamaker didn’t just rebuild a theater, though that would have been enough to hand down to posterity. Thanks to The Globe’s worldwide educational program, children and adults on every continent are learning to act, to understand and interpret Shakespeare’s nearly 40 plays, and to pass on their knowledge and passion to their own and future generations.

Now, there’s a true legacy.

ooo00ooo

                                   

AN ASSEMBLY OF AUNTS

They told me that John Harris, my grandfather on my mother’s side, was tall and strikingly handsome, with brown wavy hair and Delft blue eyes. They said women found him witty and charming. They also agreed that he was a blackguard, a rake and womanizer.

He may well have been as mesmerizingly good-looking and charming as they all claimed, but there’s no doubt that, in the British lingo of those days, he was also a cad and a bounder. He married my grandmother, May Twitchen in the 1880s, and bought a big, elegant house in the city of Winchester a dozen or so miles from England’s South Coast.  Here she delivered him seven children – Margot; John; Elna; Issie; Kate; John; Peace, my mother, and Andrew. Not long after Andrew was born, John Harris senior deserted the family, leaving them not a penny, and they never saw him again.

Remarkably, John Harris’s father, a wealthy man of some standing in the city, came to the rescue. He was fond of May and her children, and must also have been publicly shamed by his son’s behavior. He, and his estate when he died, provided enough money to support May for the rest of her long life, and to raise all seven children, educating them at private schools.

May was a fine, tall and graceful woman. When I was small she seemed possibly regal, sitting as though in state, all dressed in black like a widowed queen holding court. Most women born at the end of the 19th Century had not been prepared to make their own way in life and earn a living. May was a competent painter in oils and watercolors, an accomplished cathedral organist and piano player and even, later in her life, published an acceptable novella based largely on her own story.

Life was an ordeal for May and her family. Three years after her husband deserted her, Andrew, who was born deaf, was run over and killed by a runaway horse and carriage. By that time the family had left the Winchester house and moved to a more cramped and humble home in Broadstairs, a seaside resort on the South East Coast where, on a clear day, you could see across the twenty or so miles of the English Channel to France.

A decade or so after she and the family were abandoned, May became a Catholic with the fervor and devotion that only converts seem to achieve. Margot, her oldest child, followed her into the church, as did Kate and Peace. Catholicism bestowed an almost saintly calm and benevolence on May, but Margot’s new religiosity spawned a blend of dogmatism and a disagreeable bigotry.  Some people felt that her personality was transformed not so much as a result of her change of faith as the tragic end of a love affair, when she fell for a young infantry officer who died in the trenches in Flanders during World War I Flanders. She never married, and for the rest of her working life looked after two wealthy spinster sisters in a nearby village as their companion and chauffeur. When they died they left her a modest pension.

I never met John and his family, who was no more than a whispered topic of conversation in the family by the time I was old enough to take notice. He worked all the way to the top in the Civil Service at the British Passport Office headquarters in London, and married a woman named Winifred. They had a son, Ian, and shortly afterward John, following his father’s example, left Winifred for another, younger woman. He turned his back on his mother and his five remaining siblings, and they never saw or heard of him again.

Elna, christened Eleanor, had polio (then called ‘infantile paralysis’) as a teenager, and spent most of her fifty odd years on a contraption like a gurney. She was a kindly, affectionate and remarkably brave and lovable person, with a mane of beautiful auburn hair and a sad smile. I never saw her stand on her feet, and she died shortly before her mother in the mid-1940s.

Then there was Issie (Isobel), a plain, bespectacled, bone thin, indomitably cheerful woman.  She was an avid reader, had an infectious giggle and an unexpectedly bawdy sense of humor. It was her burden for decades to look after her mother and Elna who, because of her disability, had no choice but to lie down for the rest of her life. After Elna and her mother died, Issie bought a pretty flint-stone cottage, looking forward to a long and well-deserved rest in retirement. For a year or two her garden, with its flintstone walls, was a riot of color, alive with bees and butterflies. She spent her days working voluntarily for the ancient 11^th Century church next door, and developed a talent, envied by her friends and neighbors, for discovering valuable antiques at rummage sales in surrounding villages.

Isabel’s peace was shattered when Margot, after her employers died, decided to move into her sister’s cottage. As her mother had done in her own home, Margaret took to her bed and her rosary beads, making no effort to help with the chores.  The other sisters likened this to an invasion of a sparrow’s nest by an overfed cuckoo. Soon, Issie, by now frail and in her sixties, died from a heart attack. It is no stretch of the imagination to believe that her death was at least accelerated by her everlasting journeys up and down the steep stairs in response to her older sister’s demands, and to her daily rounds of shopping, cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, darning and mending, not to mention the gardening.

Kate was a husky-voiced, strikingly handsome woman, with bold black eyes that were the downfall of many suitors. During the first war, at least two years before the law allowed, she left home and worked in an armaments plant, wearing rubber boots and up to her shins in water, making artillery shells. Between the wars she made a career of nursing, and in World War II was a colonel as the matron of a hospital ship on the Irrawaddi River in Burma. She was in her forties when she married an RAF wing-commander, who turned out in peacetime to be an abusive drunk. In the closing years of their lives, she and my mother, both widows, found themselves back overlooking the sea at Broadstairs where they had spent their youth together. They were close neighbors and inseparable friends, and Kate died in the late 1970s, followed not long after by Peace.

My mother was a kindly, warm and serene woman, with laughing eyes and a ready laugh. She was named Peace because she was born on the day in 1901 when Britain signed the peace treaty after the South African War with the Boers.  By the time my mother was twenty-one, none of May’s five daughters were married, and they all lived with their mother in the house at Broadstairs.  Little wonder that, thirty-six years later, while we were walking together, she confessed that her main reason for marrying my father had been to escape from the suffocating atmosphere of that sorority of spinsters.

Peace was the last survivor of that generation. In some ways, her married life turned out to be lonelier than if she’d stayed with her family. While she and my father were fond enough of each other, he was a much older, kindly but cautious and none-too-ambitious man. Theirs was a passionless marriage that lasted thirty-one years until he died in 1958 at the age of seventy. She lived for about thirty more years in her house by the sea before she herself died in the 1980s, at 89.

There was indeed something tragic about May Harris, and the largely unfulfilled lives of my mother and that assembly of aunts. Between them all, the six sisters and their brother John brought only three children into the world. How different might the story have been had May and her husband John stayed together? But asking “What if?” is a futile exercise. Life deals us a hand of cards, and we have no choice but to play it as best we can.

oo0oo