They came out to the floor looking at him uneasily. O my wooden O, he said to himself, my draughty echo help me now.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. It’s quite clear to me that you don’t want to do any writing, so we won’t do any writing. But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do instead. We’re going to act.’
A ripple of noise ran through the class, like the wind on an autumn day, and he saw their faces brightening. The shades of Shakespeare and Sophocles forgive me for what I am to do, he prayed.
‘We are going,’ he said, ‘to do a serial and it’s going to be called “The Rise of a Pop Star”.’ It was as if animation had returned to their blank dull faces, he could see life sparkling in their eyes, he could see interest in the way they turned to look at each other, he could hear it in the stir of movement that enlivened the room.
‘Tracy,’ he said, ‘you will be the pop star. You are coming home from school to your parents’ house. I’m afraid,’ he added, ‘that as in the reverse of the days of Shakespeare the men’s parts will have be to be acted by the girls. Tracy, you have decided to leave home. Your parents of course disapprove. But you want to be a pop star, you have always wanted to be one. They think that that is a ridiculous idea. Lorna, you will be the mother, and Helen, you will be the father.’
He was astonished by the manner in which Tracy took over, by the ingenuity with which she and the other two created the first scene in front of his eyes. The scene grew and became meaningful, all their frustrated enthusiasm was poured into it.
First of all without any prompting Tracy got her school bag and rushed into the house while Lorna, the mother, pretended to be ironing on a desk that was quickly dragged out into the middle of the floor, and Helen the father read the paper, which was his own Manchester Guardian snatched from the top of his desk.
‘Well, that’s it over,’ said Tracy, the future pop star.
‘And what are you thinking of doing with yourself now?’ said the mother, pausing from her ironing.
‘I’m going to be a pop star,’ said Tracy.
‘What’s that you said?’ – her father, laying down the paper.
‘That’s what I want to do,’ said Tracy, ‘other people have done it.’
‘What nonsense,’ said the father. ‘I thought you were going in for hairdressing.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Tracy.
‘You won’t stay in this house if you’re going to be a pop star,’ said the father. ‘I’ll tell you that for free.’
‘I don’t care whether I do or not,’ said Tracy.
‘And how are you going to be a pop star?’ said her mother.
‘I’ll go to London,’ said Tracy.
‘London. And where are you going to get your fare from?’ said the father, mockingly, picking up the paper again.
Mark could see that Tracy was thinking this over: it was a real objection. Where was her fare going to come from? She paused, her mind grappling with the problem.
‘I’ll sell my records,’ she said at last.
Her father burst out laughing. ‘You’re the first one who starts out as a pop star by selling all your records.’ And then in a sudden rage in which Mark could hear echoes of reality he shouted,
‘All right then. Bloody well go then.’
Helen glanced at Mark, but his expression remained benevolent and unchanged.
Tracy, turning at the door, said, ‘Well then, I’m going. And I’m taking the records with me.’ She suddenly seemed very thin and pale and scrawny.
‘Go on then,’ said her father.
‘That’s what I’m doing. I’m going.’ Her mother glanced from daughter to father and then back again but said nothing.
‘I’m going then,’ said Tracy, pretending to go to another room and then taking the phantom records in her arms. The father’s face was fixed and determined and then Tracy looked at the two of them for the last time and left the room. The father and mother were left alone.
‘She’ll come back soon enough,’ said the father but the mother still remained silent. Now and again the father would look at a phantom clock on a phantom mantelpiece but still Tracy did not return. The father pretended to go and lock a door and then said to his wife,
‘I think we’d better go to bed.’
And then Lorna and Helen went back to their seats while Mark thought, this was exactly how dramas began in their bareness and naivety, through which at the same time an innocent genuine feeling coursed or peered as between ragged curtains.
When the bell rang after the first scene was over he found himself thinking about Tracy wandering the streets of London, as if she were a real waif sheltering in transient doss-houses or under bridges dripping with rain. The girls became real to him in their rôles whereas they had not been real before, nor even individualistic behind their wall of apathy. That day in the staff-room he heard about Tracy’s saga and was proud and non-committal.
The next day the story continued. Tracy paced up and down the bare boards of the classroom, now and again stopping to look at ghostly billboards, advertisements. The girls had clearly been considering the next development during the interval they had been away from him, and had decided on the direction of the plot. The next scene was in fact an Attempted Seduction Scene.
Tracy was sitting disconsolately at a desk which he presumed was a table in what he presumed was a café.
‘Hello, Mark,’ she said to the man who came over to sit beside her. At this point Tracy glanced wickedly at the real Mark. The Mark in the play was the dark-haired girl who had asked for the records and whose name was Annie.
‘Hello,’ said Annie. And then, ‘I could get you a spot, you know.’
‘What
