Chapter Eight

Saturday 11th May

'You've got to have a dream, if you don't have a dream. How you gonna have a dream come true?'

"Now you must know this one! South Pacific premiered on Broadway in April 1949." Anne said to her younger friend as they found their seats at the independent theatre.

"I remember seeing it on TV," Nikki admitted. "But it was years ago now. I'm sure I'll be surprised at how much I've forgotten."

"It was good of you to come." Anne said as they sat down.

"I really enjoyed the last one, I think I like amateur productions better than the fancy West End shows sometimes. The professional ones are so slick, so produced there's a rawness about these that just captures the emotions more."

"I always enjoyed it, when I was part of the group," Anne admitted.

"Harry said he was a pirate once."

"Did he? It must have been years ago, I don't remember that."

"I'm sure he wouldn't make it up, he said he was supposed to be working the sound desk, but someone was sick or something."

"Oh, I do remember now. It was the summer he was doing his A levels, he'd already got an offer of 2 E's back in the days when you sat entrance exams for Oxbridge places. So he had a long summer with not much to do. He did have a lovely voice as a child, but he was always a bit shy. It was the Pirates of Penzance if I remember correctly, they haven't done a Gilbert and Sullivan for a while, maybe I'll suggest it later."

Nikki wondered if Anne knew that Harry spent his spare time now singing. He'd had his own premiere just off Broadway a week or so ago. She was sure he wouldn't have told her. She didn't really know why. Anne would have been proud of her son's achievements even if it was from a rather unusual quarter. But she also knew that Harry would think that it was just another way to disappoint his mother.

"You did enjoy yourself over there didn't you?" Anne asked.

"I had a great time," Nikki replied truthfully.

"He says you don't Skype him so much anymore."

"We're still friends," Nikki admitted hastily.

"What happened dear?" Anne asked patiently.

"He's got a great life there, he's happy… he has some great new friends…"

"He hasn't got you," Anne interrupted.

Nikki didn't bother giving Anne the 'we're just friends' speech. It had barely worked the first time they'd come to the theatre together when they were only just getting to know each other. There would be no chance she would believe her now.

"He lives in New York, I live in London. He's not coming back. I…" Nikki broke off, she could feel the tears hovering ready to fall, but she couldn't fall apart in front of Harry's mother. Anne reached across the seat and gave Nikki's hand a gentle squeeze. It was such a Harry like thing to do, Nikki almost gasped.

"I'm sorry," Anne said. "I thought going out there would help."

"I think it probably did," Nikki admitted with a slight sniff. "I mean before we were talking all the time, we didn't need anyone else because we still had each other. Now we're on our own. It's make or break time. It's what Harry wanted from the start."

"You don't feel the urge to move over there then?" Anne asked pointedly.

"It's not my home, I don't want it to be my home, I belong here in London with Leo and…" she petered out. Harry had been the name on her lips. Why had he left? "I'm just helping him do what he set out to do at the start," Nikki insisted.

"But what if he's changed his mind about what he wants?" Anne asked.

"Why would he do that?" Nikki shrugged.

"He's never been good at knowing what he wants." Anne explained. "Most small boys would love a trip to the sweet shop but the huge choice just overwhelmed Harry. All those jars and bottles arrayed on the shelves, shelves upon shelves. He could see all the possibilities, all the options but with so many choices he was paralysed with fear that he would make the wrong choice and then he didn't make any choice at all and would ask the assistant for a quarter pound mixture. He would invariably end up with a pear drop and he hated those but ate them anyway. It took years before he was confident enough to make his own decision or even ask for a mixture without pear drops. I didn't take him that often; we both found the whole thing exhausting.

"Harry still likes his sweets. I was still pulling half eaten packets out of random drawers about the office months after he left."

Anne smiled.

"Don't give up," she said as the lights went down and the show started.

##

'Don't give up,' Nikki thought later that night as she tried vainly to go off to sleep. It's what Mrs Finkelstein had said to her too, but how could she keep going? Bloody Mary in the show had tried to manipulate the man in love with her daughter, telling him to have a dream; only to find his stubbornness too deep rooted and then he went off on some fool's mission and ended up getting himself killed, which was hardly a great result. Was Anne trying to manipulate them both? She wasn't sure.

Harry was sure to balk at any intervention his mother tried to engineer in his life; except he'd seemed to enjoy it when Anne had sent her to New York. Is that why she was so keen to keep in touch with Nikki? Was it a coincidence that these were the two shows that she had been invited to? Shows all about the trials of being in love, and the difficult course of true love? There was a simple explanation she was sure; when it came down to it there weren't many shows that weren't about love and she doubted the OAP's in the group would be interested in doing Starlight Express.

She thought back over what Anne had said about Harry's inability to make choices. A gnawing seed of self-doubt began to take root in her brain. What if she was the pear drop in the mixed bag that life had dealt Harry? What if she was just there because he couldn't make his own choices? She was the one thing that was always there, but the one thing he never really wanted. The one thing he just put up with because it was less stressful than making a proper decision. There was always someone else to blame when it went wrong then. She didn't want to be his pear drop. That wasn't her dream. It wasn't her dream at all.


Happy Talk: Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Sung by Bloody Mary