New World in the Morning by Stephen Benatar Page A

incredibly circumspect.”
    Head withdrawn. Head put back again.
    â€œAnd, Matt, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an adolescent! Nothing! Don’t you think it for an instant.”
    Junie followed me out into the kitchen. “Oh, by the way, Mimsy and Pim were heartbroken to hear about Susie. But they’re keeping their fingers crossed. And if there’s anything they can do…”
    â€œThat’s very kind,” I murmured.
    â€œAnd they thought you were totally wonderful yesterday. But they told me not to tell you.”
    I laughed. Junie went back to fetch more things off the table—or possibly to encourage the children to do so. For the moment, I forgot about making coffee. Supposing I could get into RADA? It wasn’t feasible, of course…but just supposing? Not simply would it be a means of expanding my horizons: of maybe one day actually travelling a bit, of getting really overseas: to New York perhaps (to check out the delis), San Francisco, Hollywood. It would also mean that, sooner than this, at least during RADA’s term-time, I’d be able to stay partly in London: an end to any problem over being with Moira. (And indeed wouldn’t that alone represent an expansion to my horizons!) It seemed too good to be true, a readymade solution when as yet I’d hardly been on the lookout for one: thinking no further than that little house in Silver Street, which I now saw would have been hopelessly impractical. But this changed everything. Moira in the week; Junie and the children at weekends. The ingredients for paradise.
    For paradise… Capten, art tha listenin’ there below?
    And—who knew—into the bargain I might even make a reputation?
    The possibilities seemed endless.
    In the end I didn’t even go to Ruth Minton’s. The deep blue sea still beckoned but this was a deeper, bluer, wider, warmer, infinitely more inviting ocean than any that had ever lapped upon the shores of Dover or of Deal.
    And to expand a little on that Rattigan metaphor…the sleeping prince had finally—finally!—awoken.
    Later, he wrote a lengthy letter to RADA, this newly arisen prince; addressed it simply to The Secretary, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. If it was meant to get there, then it would get there…and I knew for certain that it was. I asked for information regarding grants, scholarships, auditions. I listed the plays I’d been in and let them have a recent photograph I liked—it had been taken on the beach and made me look all of twenty-eight—together with five hundred words on why I thought I should be suitable. I knew full well I had to sell myself.
    I enclosed a stamped addressed envelope, and copies of cuttings from the East Kent Mercury .
    The mouths of pillar boxes were too small, so for the second time that day I walked to the post office. At such an hour it seemed odd to be doing this without Susie, practically disloyal—and, naturally, there wouldn’t be any collection before morning—yet at the same time it was comforting to suppose that my fate was now stamped, sealed, very nearly official, and would soon be winging its way into the hands of arbiters. Or at least—not to get too metaphoric or highflown or roc-like about it—to suppose the envelope was.
    (Though for Junie’s sake—no, for all our sakes—I certainly wanted to remain rocklike. As rocklike as ever.)
    That night the count was up to almost a thousand…
    Yow-w-w-w!

11
    The following morning partial sanity returned—although, thankfully, only partial. For the first moment, I felt alarmed by what I’d done, but then I laughed and shrugged and thought oh what the hell. Cast your bread upon the waters…nothing ventured, nothing gained! All my life, I now believed, I’d played things far too safe. I was thirty-six. In another four years…! Thank God I’d woken up in time.
    Ungrudging