The very last night I felt a huge relief that it was almost over. By that point I was anxious to get home and see how everyone was after the funeral. I was surprised to find that I too was anxious to talk about him and listen to everyone else – it would all be praise, needless to say, and things we already knew, but I wanted to hear it all the same.

There had been rumours that a wandering preacher was coming to speak to the congregation on the last night. Nicola said he had been known to summon the Holy Spirit and reawaken your faith in God. I was of the opinion that noone around me needed any reawakening – they were already 100% focused – but I was curious to see if he was as good as everyone seemed to think.

There was nothing Nicola could have said to prepare me for him. He came in and started much the same as anyone else (“So glad to see you all, isn’t it a beautiful night? Chilly, but still. May I say a huge thank you to those of you who shared your stories with us tonight, it was a touching tribute to the glory of God…”). He diverted quite quickly from the usual line of talk and began speaking about God as a tangible force.

“Take off your shoes, ladies and gentlemen, please. This is a holy space. Sit comfortably – make sure you are comfortable – and search yourself for the Holy Spirit. Do not be afraid. He is with you at all times, guiding you, watching you, even within you. He is the very fabric of our world. Remember, the Lord is your shepherd, there is nothing you shall want.

“Now please, close your eyes.”

I bowed my head to shield him from view but I did not keep my eyes closed. I was watching those around me to see if they were involved in his speech.

“God is in this room at this very moment. I can sense him. I think you can too. He wants you to know that he is here and that he loves you. But he only visits those who truly accept him into their hearts. Hm?”

Noone made a sound in the marquee. The only things I could hear were the soft movements of the tarpaulin in the cold night air. I felt the grass under my toes and an increasingly bitter breeze coming down the mountains. I could not smell anything, my nose was numb.

“Do you feel a breath near you?” the preacher asked. A lady near me gasped. Another shrieked.

“Do you feel the cold on your feet?” His voice was louder this time.

“If you feel the urge to cry – if you feel the urge to shiver – if you feel you need to scream, do not hold back. The Holy Spirit is within you and wants you to be free.”

More sounds of crying came from the front of the audience, then a dull thud and a strained murmur of voices.

“I believe a member of our group has fainted – do not be afraid. The Lord repeats upon us in different ways.”

I was truly afraid. It all seemed a little hysterical, or histrionic. I could not empathise with such an extreme belief and I was beginning to shiver.

“That is the Holy Spirit,” he announced.

I trembled. If the Holy Spirit was visiting me, it was unpleasant and I much preferred being without it. In later years I looked back on that moment with a certain sting of bitterness in reflecting that God touched me and he was cold.

But with time I see that was not what upset me. I was hurt that he did not touch me at all.

We returned to Riedlingen the following morning, having packed up what was left of the food and clothes and the Bergmanns said heartfelt goodbyes to the friends they had made. I waited in the car with my books. The Bergmanns were tactful enough not to ask me if I was looking forward to going home or if I had enjoyed Jesus Camp. Instead we talked about the weather. The thermometer in the car registered thirty-five degrees.

Once we got back to the house, I immediately barred myself in my room and stayed there for the remainder of the day writing the rest of my novella. It was about two young German girls living in Riedlingen and the loves of their lives. I had been far too influenced that summer by Dirty Dancing and She’s All That so all I could write about was finding yourself through meeting someone else. I collected fragments of poems and illustrations and threw them all into the notebooks I kept hidden under the bed. I called Inna as soon as I got in and asked her to meet me in the Eiscafé next to the Donau-Insel the following day. We both got Spaghetti-eis and I launched into an hour-long rant about the camp and the last Harry Potter book, which I had finished reading a third time on the drive home.

School was out for the summer by then and most of my new friends had flown to various parts of the world with their families for the few short weeks they had before the next school year started. I was due home soon, too, and I began to look forward to seeing my own house again and cease being a burden to Johann and Nicola.

They let me have a goodbye party in their house for a few of my friends – we just watched some films, ate some pizza and sat out on the deck until dark. Saying goodbye was oddly formal, as we did not know when we would see each other again. I was determined to come back and surprise them.

Johann and I traced the towns back to Friedrichshafen – Ertingen, Herbertingen, Bad Saulgau, Ravensburg – and talked freely for the hour and a half it took to drive. I thanked him again for his hospitality and he thanked me for giving him all the records I’d bought in the camp. Some of them were artists he had listened to growing up, old German blues and jazz singers. I was glad that someone would enjoy them.

He saw me as far as security and wished me all the best on the flight home. I waved goodbye to him from the plane – he was standing on the viewing post on the roof of the airport. I watched the red roofs fall out of sight until the plane flew into cloud cover and then I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

When my Dad greeted me in the Arrivals lounge at Shannon, I ran forward to hug him. He was quietly delighted, in the Irish way, and did not speak much as we got the car, allowing me to flow freely about how much I loved my trip. I verbally tip-toed around the subject of the camp, unsure how much Mam had already told him, and once we sat into the car I asked, “So, how has everyone been since you last saw me?”

As soon as the question came out of my mouth I wished I could take it back. I saw in my Dad’s expression a sadness too much for words and I remembered with a jolt that he had lost James.

“Lonesome,” he said, “It has been lonesome, but we’re glad to have you back.”

He placed his big hand on my knee and shook it gently. We both began to well up and so turned our heads to look at passing cars and the oncoming twilight. The moon was faint in the sky but still visibly full. My Dad put on his favourite CD of traditional Irish music; I felt at once that I had come home.

I soon picked up the differences in how everyone I encountered spoke German. The areas in and around the Swabian Jura have a specific dialect that differs not just in pronunciation but in some cases entire words. What I noticed most was that in Schwäbisch, gendered grammar rules mattered less because words were rarely enunciated as distinct units. The ins-and-outs of saying something as mundane and grammatically deceptive as ‘Das ist einen Tür’ (that is a door) became two simple sounds that merely nodded to their Standard German original: ‘Descha deer.’ ‘We go’ is ‘mir ganget’ instead of Hochdeutsch’s ‘wir gehen.’ Schwäbisch was a lovely combination of all of Hochdeutsch’s harsh sounds with the softer intonations of rural isolation. The verb ‘schlafen’ (to sleep) becomes ‘schlofa’, ‘putzen’ (to clean) ‘butza’ while more playful alterations occur with words like ‘Fest’ (party) – cleanly pronounced as it looks in Hochdeutsch, but in Swabia it becomes the coarser, fuller ‘Fescht.’ By the time I returned to school, I had lost all the primness of ‘Mädchen’, ‘Haus’ and ‘Tasche’ and flowed with the natural sounds of ‘Mädle’, ‘Heisle’ and ‘Dasch.’

Every Sunday at 11am we went to non-denominational service in the community centre on the other side of town. What struck me about it was their drastically different approach to God in comparison to the Catholicism I knew. People would chat informally and wander around to each other in the room before the service began. It was performed in the community centre function room – a large space lined with windows to let in the white sunlight and fold-up chairs with a lectern at the top, next to the vertical piano. There were no statues or robes or cardboard communion hosts – just books and discussions and hymns. I began to see it as a weekly book club where the book never changed and we only referenced it by chapter and verse. The hymns were supplied by hymn-books on the back of each chair, and for some reason kept their original English lyrics next to the German translations; the gospels helped me learn to speak. The only set routine was that there would be a main host each week to run through the service and then a selected member of the congregation would supply what I could only think of as the ‘non-sermon.’ It was roughly in the same section of the service as a sermon would be in Catholic mass, lasted for about the same length of time and seemed to have a similar intention – while sermons were intended as a discussion of religious or ethical challenges, in my experience they often edged on lecture. The non-sermon was everything a Catholic sermon had intended to be – it delved into the significance of morals and principles like respect, familial love, self-doubt and ambition. After each service I felt a little bit renewed – faith didn’t necessarily involve censure. I began praying again.

One weekend in late July, Johann and Nicola began talking about camping in the Swabian Jura. I was eager to try camping and volunteered to join them.

“It is a religious retreat,” Johann informed me, “there will be marquees and tents with reading groups and discussions and every night there’s service in the main marquee with hymns and a talk. There will be lots of kids your age there, too, and Christa.”
Christa, Johann and Nicola’s thirteen-year-old daughter, would be sharing a tent with me while they slept in the caravan. It was to be a seven-day break; it ended up to be a ten-day stay.

I remember packing the caravan for quite a while – we had to bring enough food and drink for four people for a week, as well as clothes, blankets, books, shoes, raingear, torches, a gas tank, towels, toilet paper. It took three days to ensure we had everything we needed. There were bathrooms and shower facilties on site and a small shop in case we had forgotten anything – my prized possession was the seventh Harry Potter book, which I had just bought after years of waiting. I decided, after prolonged hesitation, to bring my maths book from home, too, and practice some algebra and trigonometry.

Johann drove the four of us in the Volkswagen with the caravan hitched behind. There was some worry – once we hit the mountains and the ascent became steeper than fifty degrees – that the caravan would pull the car back down, but we made it. A cheerful man with a picture of Jesus on his t-shirt greeted us at the top and asked Johann for his name through the rolled-down window of the car. He checked his list and then directed Johann to a designated spot a few minutes’ drive away. We passed countless other families setting up their tents and caravans and I began to notice that the other people there were either Christa’s age or younger, or adults. In retrospect, there were a few seventeen year olds but to me, the gap between my age and theirs at that time was insurmountable, not to mention their dialect.

The first day was uneventful. I began to understand why Christa’s elder brother Max dismissively referred to it as ‘Jesus camp’; the gentleman who greeted us had aided that as a nickname. There were a number of buildings near the shower facilities that housed a bookshop, a grocery shop, a few function rooms as well as a number of permanent residences. I did not ask who would live on an isolated plateau in the Swabian Jura permanently, but I presumed it would be someone who had made religion their vocation. The bookshop was full of religious icons, rosary beads, postcards and dream catchers and the shelves lined with memoirs and fiction books that all centred on someone’s relationship to God or Jesus or the Virgin Mary. I picked up a book that I thought would be interesting – the blurb informed me it was a story of twins, one boy and one girl who began to have feelings for each other, romantically, and turned to God for guidance. I got as far as that plot twist and put the book back on the shelf. There was a strong sense I felt that day, the first day on site, that I had joined something in which I would not fit, which increased the longer I stayed. It was not the book, but the focus everyone seemed to have – the emphasis had moved away from discussing principles like respect and ambition and back to the stations of the cross. I dropped into a few events on the first few days there – Bible discussions, treks to ‘Das Kreuz’, reenactments of the Easter passage and hymnals – but there was a zeal everyone shared which I did not. They sang songs which contained lyrics such as ‘I will pick up the sword and fight in the name of the Lord,’ and I knew I did not belong. I tried to get involved in the vain hope that a shaft of light would descend on me one day and I would be as enthusiastic as the rest, but instead I felt an odd sickness that I later recognised as loneliness and fear. I stopped going to the events, put away my Bible and started rereading The Deathly Hallows for leisure.

Source

Having no access to the internet meant that I had a lot more time on my hands. I slept in every day – I wanted to avoid most of the events, which was difficult, because they had a full programme. I knew that Johann and Nicola were disappointed in my lack of integration especially in stark contrast to Christa, who was already making fast friends. They urged me to join her and the others and stop lying around the caravan all day reading Harry Potter. I understood their frustration but could not match my willingess to please them and be a good guest with my own discomfort. Everyone I met was there for a reason, while I waited at the fringes for time to pass.

After much polite hinting, I left the caravan and joined Christa and her friends around a fire. It was the last few hours before we all went to the nightly service in the main marquee and they were chatting at a speed I could not fathom, making in-jokes for which I alone had no reference. Christa tried her best to include me but I was determined to go independently, as a gesture to Johann and Nicola, but speak to noone; it seemed every time I did, someone laughed at my awkward turn of phrase. The kids around the fire were tired of having a grumpy fifteen-year-old sulking next to them so they decided to walk to Das Kreuz. I had no idea what it meant – Christa patiently explained, “It’s about twenty minutes away. It’s a big crucifix on a cliff. There’ll be more of us over there to hang out with.”

“Do we have to walk through the woods in the dark?” I asked.

“It’s fine, we’ve done it before.”

There were two boys in our party – the ringleaders – one thirteen, one seventeen, who played pranks on the girls while we manouevred around fallen trees, low branches and nettles. They sniggered and shouted and made out that we were having a great time while the girls rolled their eyes and snapped back and I did my best to lose them.

We reached Das Kreuz and found another group of teenagers. They all knew each other and greeted us individually; I sat a little away from them and stared down at the towns below, only visible by the little dots of light from houses and streets.

One or two of the others came over and tried to get me involved. It was sweet of them and I was grateful for their effort; but I could not follow the conversation and in what I could understand, I did not want to join.

After half an hour or so the fires died out and we had to go back to camp before anyone missed us. Everyone began to move out; I stayed behind, half hoping they would forget me and I would not have to rejoin the group. I sat on the fallen tree trunk and looked up at the cross; it was facing the other way. I thought maybe that might mean God was listening more carefully. I asked him to help and to make me understand more. I then asked him to say hello to all my grandparents for me and to watch over the rest of my family at home, including the pets. The moon was a waxing crescent that night and I wished by the time it was full I would be somewhere I belonged again. Christa ran back and told me to hurry up or I’d never find my way.

The main talk in the marquee that night, after the songs and prayers, was from an ex-banker who found God. This man in particular stays in my memory; perhaps because he spoke a comprehensible German, or because he told his story slowly and carefully. He had been a banker, gathered a lot of wealth, started a family and raised children, but being so fuelled by a motivation based on attainment and status, he was still unsatisfied. Then his bank offered to send him out to Las Vegas with a few of his colleagues on a trip that was intended to be half marketing- and half leisure-based. They were all men in their twenties who had risen up the corporate ladder three rungs at a time, but unlike him, his colleagues were single. The wares of Las Vegas were bedazzling and they soon found themselves in a glorified brothel. He described his frustration with his life so far – that he had achieved everything but felt nothing – and his desperation to overcome the numbness, his powerlessness to resist and the disgusting realisation the morning after he had slept with a prostitute, while his wife nursed his children at home. He said he had never felt so ashamed, so sick, in his life and he attempted to commit suicide. But at the last moment he saw the faces of his children and they stayed his hand. It was then that he knew he had seen the face of God. When he finished his story, everyone in the tent stood on their feet, clapped and cheered and then sang ‘Gloria’ the loudest they could go. I was pleased that he had admitted his mistake and had the courage and humility to come home and deal with it, but I could not see where God came in.

The next day I stayed in the caravan and left only to shower. I wrote letters to my friends and home and started writing a story that fluorished into a novella by the time I left. I was almost finished reading The Deathly Hallows for a second time when I got a phone call from my Mam. It was the first time I’d heard English in months and it took me a few minutes for the words to flow. She started off with the usual greetings and enquiries but I noticed a tone in her voice.

“Are you ok?”

“Fine, love, fine. How are you?”

I did not want to tell her how I had disappointed Johann and Nicola, or how I had frustrated them by being a stubborn house guest, but I felt guilty about it all and poured it out to her over the phone. She listened and told me not to worry about it and do my best to be polite and helpful. Each time she spoke I heard that tone again.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” I asked.

“We’ve had a terrible shock.”

I asked her what had happened. She sounded forcibly controlled. It was then she told me that a close friend of the family, my Dad’s best friend, had died.

“He was painting the gable of a house and fell from the ladder. He hit his head on a pole behind him and whatever way he went down, he was gone before he hit the ground.”

I looked around the caravan but I no longer felt that it was there. I looked at the book but I didn’t read any words on the cover. The sun was streaming in the window but I could not feel its warmth. After all of that, all I began to feel was anger.

My Mam told me to try and enjoy myself for the last few weeks of my holiday and that they would look forward to seeing me in Shannon once I got in.

When she hung up the phone, I lay my head on the small fold-out table and cried.

When Johann and Nicola returned from their latest event, they came into the caravan and found me criss-crossing through algebra. I was still crying, silently, and had surrounded myself with tissues. I could sense their frustration again; they presumed I was crying because I was alone and so they left me to it. I later told them that my Dad’s best friend, James Howard, had died; they understood and were sorry for the loss. I continued with algebra.

Three years of studying German and I had accumulated all the benefits that came with that amount of time in the Irish school system – about five lines of conversation-starters and no understanding of German culture. But I was eager to prove my independence when family friends in Germany offered to house me for a summer in between the end of one school year and the start of another. Having only lived away from home once before – a three-week stint in Irish college where I was ridiculed for bringing a Bible – it was time to try being European.

The first mistake I made after touching down in Friedrichshafen airport and saying ‘Guten morgen’ to my host, Johann, was approaching his car and trying to sit into the driver’s seat. He laughed and offered me the keys to drive home. As we left the expanse of open fields at the airport, I began to notice the markers of being in Germany – yellow road signs with black font, the whitewashed houses with steep roofs and red roof tiles, strawberry fields with handwritten advertisements along the road to pick your own punnets and signs at the end of every village with its name crossed out. That last one had me lost, and after leaving two or three towns I asked Johann what it meant.

“Es bedeutet dass du das Stadt gleich verlassen hast. Siehst du? Wir sind gerade von Bad Saulgau abgefahren.”

He glanced over to see my confused expression and laughed. “I will help you as much as I can, but we have to speak in German if you want to learn it. If you don’t understand something, just ask and I’ll translate.”

“Ok,” I said. “Could you repeat?”

“Wir sind gerade von den Stadt abgefahren.”

I broke it down word-by-word. ‘Wir sind,’ we are; ‘gerade,’ straight; ‘das Stadt,’ the town – but ‘abgefahren’ required more thought. I understood ‘fahren’ (travel) but could not comprehend the rest.

“Could you translate ‘abgefahren’?” I asked.

“ ‘Ab’ is a conjunction that can mean ‘out of’ or ‘from’. German grammar allows you to use conjunctions with verbs in the nominative case. So ‘abfahren’ means ‘to travel from’ and to say it in the past tense in German you say ‘We are, or have, travelled out of’ – ‘Wir sind abgefahren.’”

I must have looked upset as he quickly rejoined, “Don’t worry. You’ll pick this up. German is an easy language; once you learn a handful of words, you’ll see how we just reuse them in different structures. Aber jetzt müssen wir auf Deutsch sprechen.”

I spoke only German for the following three months.

He smiled. “See? We’ve just departed from Bad Saulgau.”

I repeated the name as he had pronounced it. Baad Saowlgow. I liked the round sounds.

“How many towns left?” I asked.

“Two. Herbertingen and Ertingen.”

“Do you stop in them often?”

“Sometimes I cycle through them when I’m out and  wants to be rid of me.”

While Johann teaches German and English at the Gymnasium (higher secondary school), Nicola rules the homestead, gives English tutorials to those who are falling behind and commits herself to the Christian community in the town, Riedlingen.

Cycling became a regular aspect of life. It was the easiest way to travel around a town at that age and gave me a certain stretch of freedom. In the evenings, when the sun lingered ever longer out of the reach of dusk, I would take my bike and pedal along grass paths and gravel roads on the edges of the nearby towns – Altheim, Grüningen, Pflummern, Daugendorf. They could not mean anything to me but noises, and they were my chance to practice the sounds again, and rolling ‘r’s, which I learnt was most important to give an impression that you were not a foreigner.

Johann and Nicola’s house was second-to-last on Andreas-Jerin-Strasse, the northernmost corner of Riedlingen. I wanted to know who Andreas von Jerin was – it turns out, he was a sixteenth-century bishop and imperial envoy who was born in Riedlingen. Each street in the town is named after something, usually a famous person – Heinrich von Kleist and Adalbert Stifter were parallel with us and Johann Goethe connected the three. It was overwhelmingly romantic for me to consider that I was living on the edge of town among great European poets. More romantic still to find out that Riedlingen was situated in a dell caused by extensions from the Swabian Jura. The corner I lived on was bounded on two sides by wheatfields and one side of the horizon was obscured to the northwest by a ridge of wooded hills, the other side of which housed Zwiefalten with its outdoor swimming pool – a distinctly continental luxury. A line of electricity pylons cut the forest in half and then fell out of sight over the ridge. The other side of the horizon was only obscured when the wheat grew five feet tall in high summer. Every morning I would cycle – or if I was early, walk – by this view and think I had discovered a small corner of heaven.

Just beyond the wheatfields is a cold spring well – the temperature stays at two degrees or lower all-year-round. The Capuchin monks – who built a monastery in the town in the seventeenth century – had harnessed the spring and built a two-metre-long and two-feet-deep ditch into the ground. Since then it had been reinforced with concrete and bars and steps. In high summer, locals and tourists pilgrimage there to brave the waters; Nicola told me it was famous for stimulating good blood circulation. You would roll up your shorts, take off your shoes and walk from one end to the other as slowly as possible. We tried to do it quickly because the water was almost unbearably cold, but it was a release from the dense heat, so we usually found ourselves hopping in and out according to the humidity.

Such recreational activities had to be fitted into the rest of the day. The structure of the German day is rigorous and pragmatic. It is uncommon, except for teenagers, to rise after eight a.m. When I woke up for school, usually at half six or seven o’clock, I would immediately head to the kitchen and seek out the basket of fresh bread Johann had already brought back from the bakery. My favourite was the ‘käseseele’ (cheese roll) – a baguette with melted cheese on top. I would cover it with unsalted butter and cold sausage and pop the leftovers in a Tupperware for lunch. School finished at half twelve, while every Thursday it resumed at half two for another three hours’ work. The main, hot, meal of the day was always eaten between noon and two o’clock with no dessert, except on Sundays when, at four o’clock sharp, we would have coffee and cake. Usually at five or six in the evening we would have supper of cured cold meats and salad, followed by drinking espresso and watching forks of lightning from the deck. The hotter the day, the louder the thunder would crack in the evenings.

What I remember most of that summer was the heat. It was not unusual for the pavements to be already warm at half seven in the morning. By lunchtime the cars parked on the street shimmered in a blaze of sunshine. I hated the discomfort of living in forty degrees Celsius but I did love the nets on my windows and hearing the heavy thunder at night.

Johann and Nicola held a family barbeque once a year, usually late July, where they would arrange two picnic benches end-to-end covered in gingham tablecloths and glass tumblers and another table laden with salads, fresh breads and juices. Sometimes Nicola would bring up special blackberry jam she had stored in the cellar with pounds of pasta, pickles, tinned goods and homemade alcohol – the emergency room, I liked to call it. Johann manned a suspended grill over a charcoal fire; the bowl to hold the fire had been set specially into their back porch – ‘deck’ in German – entirely made of stone. The benches would be set up between the deck and the trees and through the branches you could only see the wooded hills that veiled Zwiefalten. Everything had its proper place. But the food was the highlight.

At the age of fifteen I was proud to say that I had never once assented to eating salad, but Nicola would arrange mozzarella and cold homegrown tomatoes from their garden in a circle on their Tanzanian crockery that I could not resist. I tasted real orange juice for the first time, as well as peach ice tea, espresso and currywurst. I knew that Germans were famous for beer and sausages, but I did not yet fathom what lay in wait. The food was never indulgent or heavy – it was filling, hearty and most of all delicious. Bakeries were the greatest danger to my health with sweet treats on display from as soon as 6am. More than once my new friends and I would quickly cycle over to Bäckerei Böck before going home (‘Gut schmeckt was Böck bäckt’).

On especially hot days, those my age would wind up at the Donau-Insel – the smaller end of a small island in between the train station east of the river and the Eis-café west of it – made into a leaf-shape by the convergence of two branches of the river Danube. You could jump off the bridge that joined the train station and Eis-café, right into the river, and then stroll up onto the pebble shore to drink beer with the other indolent teenagers. Some were sixteen and therefore old enough to buy and consume beer – spirits were not allowed for another two years. Those of us who had not yet reached legal drinking age would quickly swig from the others’ bottles while any bypassing adults were not watching.

I asked my friend Inna one day if what we were rinsing our ankles in was really the Danube or just a tributary.

“It is the Danube alright,” she said, “when it leaves Riedlingen, it travels north to Ulm, Regensburg and then through Austria, Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade, touches the border of Ukraine and Romania and then falls out into the Black Sea.”

“I wonder if you dropped anything in would someone find it in another country.”

She laughed. “Have you not heard the story?”

“Which story?”

“Surely Johann must have told you. Miriam. She’s grown up and moved to the Alsace now, but everyone’s heard about her message in a bottle.”

As soon as she said it I did remember; that’s why the thought was on my mind. Johann had mentioned her to me a few weeks previously. It was a favourite story of his from his earlier years in the Gymnasium. One day a colleague of his – Herr Knöpfle, the tenth class Geography teacher – burst into the staffroom waving around an envelope.

“You won’t believe it,” he said, “Miriam has just gotten a letter – from Mexico. Playa del Carmen. This man was out on the beach with his family and he found a message in a bottle – from little Miriam! She wrote it eight years ago and he got it only last week. Can you believe it?”

Noone really could. They asked him if he was sure.

“Of course I’m sure, it’s here, look!”

He held out the envelope and, sure enough, there was the stamp and address from Mexico. The Spanish teacher obliged them with a translation.

“ ‘Senorita Miriam, It was a lovely surprise to receive a letter that crossed the world in such a little glass case, though I am sorry to say I could not read it. I see you wrote it eight years ago from somewhere in Germany and I am so pleased that it was not lost forever, as I’m sure you thought it was. It washed up on a beach here, in Mexico, not too far from Cancún. I hope you will travel as far as your message one day and see the wonders such a journey can bring you. I believe you would like it here and I extend a warm invitation to you whenever you should like to see the Caribbean – my little girls were delighted to think that they could have a friend all the way from Germany. Best wishes for you and for the future, R–’”

I thought again about the distance a bottle would have to travel from Riedlingen to Playa del Carmen. After floating along through Linz, Vienna and Budapest, the Danube Delta and the Black Sea, it would have to get through Istanbul and Gallipoli without being caught in a bunch of reeds or broken by a ship. Once it travelled through Gallipoli unharmed it had to wind its way through the Aegean Sea, the Greek Islands and then the Mediterranean, before braving the Straits of Gibraltar and the expansive Atlantic Ocean beyond. It probably found its way into a drift down by Africa and across to South America before floating upwards through the Caribbean to Mexico.

“It’s appropriate that the geography teacher was the one who taught her,” I said.

“Maybe it would be more appropriate if it was her history teacher,” Inna replied, “The mexican kids would have been seven or eight when the message floated up. Miriam was only that age when she wrote it; she was sixteen by the time it was answered.”

“Do you know if they’re still in touch?”

“I know she went on holiday to Cancún a few years later. But I think that was more to do with her American boyfriend going on spring break than anything else. I don’t know if she met the family. I hope she did.”

We talked about composing a letter and throwing it in a bottle into the Danube, hoping it would happen across an eligible Cuban or Puerto Rican bachelor, but did not once think to put pen to paper.

Two weeks ago I popped into Waterstones on Oxford Street and saw a display of ‘Debut Novels’. The cover above caught my eye and I started reading the blurb — a dear friend of mine who was with me said it was a lovely read, so I bought it and thought nothing more of it until I started reading it on the way to work the following day. I was consumed by the story for four days until I turned the last page. Christopher Isherwood sums up my thoughts: “I think it is a book that will be very much lived in by many people; because you can live in it, like Dickens.”

The blurb reads as follows -

Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere [actually Suffolk]. She records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother, Thomas, and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer’s block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.

Ten years before the story begins, her father – James Mortmain – took out a forty-year lease on the dilapidated but beautiful castle, hoping to find either inspiration or isolation there; now, his family is selling off the furniture to buy food, along with the live-in son of their late cook (Stephen Colly). The opening line sets the scene quite aptly: “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”

Dodie Smith, most famous for writing The Hundred and One Dalmatians, also wrote I Capture the Castle, her first novel, during WWII after evacuating from London at the onset of the conflict. She bitterly missed her home country and upon settling into American life, found she wrote only of England. She and her husband were both staunch pacifists and conscientious objectors — this book was her aubade to England before the outbreak of war. (The timeline in the book is not specified but is clearly somewhere in the early 1930s.)

Joanna Trollope has said of I Capture the Castle, ”I know of few novels—except Pride and Prejudice—that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers.” This quotation Vintage chose to put on their back cover also. And after experiencing the story, I can now count myself as one of the fiercely affectionate. Each character is vividly portrayed and respectfully drawn. What struck me deeply in reading this novel is the realism of the story: the actions and reactions of each character were believable and real. For instance, when Cassandra, her sister, brother, stepmother, and of course Stephen, are grouped around the kitchen table to make a list of their income and expenditure, their father James walks in and observes the activity:

Father’s expression didn’t change as he read, he went on smiling; but I could feel something happening to him. Rose says I am always crediting people with emotions I should experience myself in their situation, but I am sure I had a real flash of intuition then. And I suddenly saw his face very clearly, not just in the way one usually sees the faces of people one is very used to. I saw how he had changed since I was little and I thought of Ralph Hodgson’s line about ‘tamed and shabby tigers’. How long it takes to write the thoughts of a minute! I thought of many more things, complicated, pathetic and very puzzling, just while Father read the list.
When he had finished, he said quite lightly: ‘And is Stephen giving us his wages?’
‘I ought to pay for my board and lodging, Mr Mortmain, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘and for – for past favours; all the books you’ve lent me—’
‘I’m sure you’ll make a very good head of the family,’ said Father. He took the oatcake with sugar on it from Topaz and moved towards the stairs.

This is only one instance in Smith’s powerful and subtle characterisation. In addition to that, she is no stranger to description:

Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind’s eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem.

Perhaps I should not call this a review so much as a desperate plea for anyone to immediately stop what they’re doing and read this book. I am reluctant to discuss the book in depth as it has the particular advantage of being entirely unpredictable. Soon after the kitchen scene above, the American heirs mentioned in the blurb appear and Cassandra and Rose’s world begins to turn flat on its axis. These heirs — Simon and Neil Cotton — are polite, handsome and intrigued by the Mortmain’s peculiar way of life. The first encounter between the two families merits a reference here:

Just then, a queer thing happened. Simon Cotton had seemed about equally fascinated by Rose and the kitchen — he kept turning from one to the other. He had taken out his torch — only he called it a flashlight — to examine the fireplace wall [...] and after he had shone it up at the stone head, he went to the narrow window that looks on to the moat, in the darkest corner of the kitchen. The torch went out and he turned it to see if the bulb had gone. And that second, it came on again. For an instant, the shadow of his head was thrown on the wall and, owing to the pointed beard, it was exactly like the Devil.

Need I say any more? This is the same lady who brought Roger to the world. Trust her.

“It’s bloody freezing,” Ruth said, cursing again the fact that she had not brought a coat. “It looked really nice this morning.”

I glanced south and tried to find the Tower of London through the myriad of bridges along the Thames. It was a dull afternoon but as I found Tower Bridge, the sun emerged out from the clouds as it often does through half-open curtains. It reminded me of that feeling of welcoming a visitor who pops round for tea. It was then I saw the bascules being raised for a passing barge.

I stopped and held Ruth back to point it out to her. I said it was the first time I’d ever seen the bascules open up. She agreed. I didn’t mention it at the time, but I felt like I was watching something remarkable, a historical moment that would not occur again. Since then I realise that’s ridiculous. I googled it and found out that the bridge is raised a thousand times a year.

We both stood and watched the road realign once more for the traffic and I smiled at the far-off horns and impatient drivers. Ruth shivered. “Come on, let’s go.”

As soon as she turned around I heard her mutter, “Oh god.” I followed her gaze northwards.

Where south of our position the sun was reigning happily, rainclouds were gathering darkly over central London. I observed the changing colourscape over my head; Ruth and I were on the threshold of the weatherfronts.

“We better find the tube station fast,” I said.

We kept our eyes on the approaching storm as we shuffled across Millennium Bridge. As we battled our way through a group of French students, I saw a perfect diagonal fork of lightning stretch across the sky right above the BT Tower.

“Ruth, oh my god, did you see that?”

“What?”

“That was lightning – right there – over central London!”

“Shite. We better hurry to St. Paul’s and get on a train.”

We had just reached the main street in front of the iconic dome when the heavens opened. We ran to the Tourist Office and sought shelter under its cantilevered roof. I looked around at the wet newspapers turning to mush in gutters, buses’ windscreenwipers throwing floods of rain side-to-side, taxis spraying pedestrians with water as they flew by and St Paul’s Cathedral quietly, hugely, present. Romantic notions of Dickensian London came into my mind, then Mary Poppins, and the Blitz. It was a little uncomfortable to look up at the columned dome with its gold cupola sitting like a clever cap and think of all the people who had looked up at the same for centuries. I felt humbled, no doubt aided by the rainwater seeping into my shoes, and fell silent, unable to articulate this sense of awe and intimidation – though I was also unable to put into words why I was intimidated. I decided to open my bag and take out the bag of crisps that were crushed by my copy of I Capture the Castle, a book I had to bring everywhere with me now that I had started reading it, and eat them. Food seemed to take my mind down from such lofty thoughts and noble feelings with a lovely, practical composure.

Ruth laughed a little at my irreverence. “What flavour are they?”

“Cheese ‘n onion,” I replied. I offered her the bag.

“Ah, nah, I only like the salt and vinegar ones.”

I preferred those too, but had already eaten all of them out of the multi-pack.

“Right,” I said, “this rain is not easing off. We best run to the station and get home.”

Ruth looked at her watch. “It’s half two. The tube’s going to be disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Definitely.”

She sighed and reconfigured her scarf. “Let’s make a run for it then.”

We circled the cathedral and tried to avoid the puddles of rain that lay in wait at the corners of uneven paving stones. My fingers were cold and my nose beginning to run by the time we reached the station. Once we got underground, I removed the coat and scarf and took a deep breath of relief. The crown of my head was wet as well as the back of my legs, but there was a warm wind blowing up the escalators from the tube.

Ruth topped up her Oyster card and we descended into the ground. I sometimes think of Dwarrowdelf, in Lord of the Rings, when powering underground like that. It seems, like St. Paul’s, huge and quiet and sacrosanct. I continued to eat from my bag of crisps to take my mind down from its exalted thoughts.

We hopped onto the Central line westward. Ruth was changing at Oxford Circus for the Victoria line, while I would continue on to Shepherds Bush and get the bus home from there. We discussed this for a good five minutes while the train passed Chancery Lane and Bank; strangely, in London, there is a strong affection and fiercer defence of the fastest and most convenient way to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’.

Ruth asked me to text her on the weekend if I had no plans. I nodded and waved her off the train. I took out my copy of I Capture the Castle and distracted myself for 40 minutes until I reached my stop.

The 237 was waiting for me as I got out at Shepherds Bush and I ran up to the upper deck to sit at the front. The sun was out again and made everything look brighter now the roads and pavements were shiny with water. There was a glare off the bus windows and shop fronts and I shielded my eyes to continue reading.

When I got home, I was in a blue mood. I pulled my hand through my hair to detangle the wet knots before giving up, taking off all my clothes and turning on the shower to the hottest it could go. The steam fogged up the window in a few minutes. I examined the imperfections on my legs, my chest, my back and felt increasingly frustrated with myself. Stepping under the hot water was the best thing that had happened to me all day. I loved the feeling of it run from my shoulders and even more how the water formed in hundreds of little droplets on my skin after I cleaned it with soap. The shower was my daily opportunity to sing, which always made me feel better, and my housemates weren’t home, so I could go as loud as I wanted. I sang some of my favourites of Adele – ‘Right as Rain’, ‘If It Hadn’t Been For Love’ and ‘Take It All’, before Billie Holiday’s ‘All of Me’, and lastly Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Summertime.’ As I stepped out of the bath, I felt my stomach full and relaxed. I put my glasses on but they, too, had misted up in the heat. It was easier to ignore my many uglinesses when I couldn’t see them. I opened the window and over my opaque glasses I could see the steam meet the cold air outside and immediately curve upwards over the edge of the roof. Then the peeling paint above the window frame, as well as the water damage on the ceiling, took away the pretty feeling I thought I had achieved by taking a shower.

I dressed myself in my pyjamas and slippers and retreated into my room with a cup of tea and I Capture the Castle. I read for what seemed like ten minutes – two hours went by. I started to get hungry at five o’clock and made some soup in a cup in the microwave and took a break from reading to write letters. I’d stolen some notecards from the V&A and British Museum last time I was there and I wanted to quickly dispose of the evidence. My first card was to my friend in Dublin, who was finishing his exams and stressing about what to do over the summer as well as the rest of his life. He would get the card with the Chekov quotation on the front – “Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

But once the clock stretched to half six, I sat back in my chair and looked out the window to the house next door. It is red brick, too, with air vents in the wall and gutters running from the roof to the ground in between the windows. I rarely see anyone inside, except a shadow at night, or a figure through the opaque bathroom window some mornings. I began to feel lonely and aimless and I snatched up my phone to send a barrage of messages to everyone I knew in the city and across the ocean – anyone who would talk to me and make me feel less like I was in a room on my own with nothing important to do. I would try and write, but it was a forced writing with a dreadful air of pretending to know what I was doing.

I thought over my walk with Ruth through Southbank, the Borough Markets and the Millennium Bridge, and the storm that split our view of the city in two. It was enjoyable to have a cityscape inside my head that could flash with lightning at one end and bathe in sunshine on the other; it made me feel less humble.

Reclining on a creaky fold-up chair, I can hold the city of London behind my eyes and listen to birds singing outside. The small frame of my window is a portal to a sky full of blue and clouds and beyond that stars and planets that look down on this city as no more than a wet newspaper. But I too can look up at the storm and think of it as no more than a lightbulb switching on and off.

Running until 13th April 2013

Played in Donmar Warehouse, Trelawny of the Wells by Arthur Wing Pinero is a beautiful tribute to the theatrical medium itself and the heart of Covent Garden could not be a more appropriate place. The theatre is an intimate space, with nineteenth century lamps all along the edge of the stage and a set to die for in its attention to detail. When I heard that Joe Wright (of Atonement, Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina) was putting on a play in the West End, I knew I could not miss it.

I went with the expectation of visually stunning theatrics and while it was not as dramatic as I had thought, the detail was exact. The story itself is about a band of players, but more about their star, Rose Trelawny, who is leaving the theatre world to marry her love, Arthur, a character not unlike those played by Hugh Grant in the 90s. The subplot surrounds the players – the ‘gypsies’ as the initimate Sir William, Arthur’s grandfather, calls them – and their struggle to survive, most aptly represented by the character Tom, who writes a play about his friends that is ‘real’, as in, real people with real troubles, none of the garish sentimentality of musicals that they so often find themselves in. While Trelawny of the Wells is hypertheatrical and camp and a little over the top, it underlines the revolution spurred on by Tom and his emphasis on the art of theatre and its effective methods at transporting people not only to fantasy, but to reality. This is a show that pays tribute to the beauty of theatre, both aesthetically and personally.

The Guardian pitched it as “a perfectly amiable evening” but noted that “Wright can’t help pushing Pinero’s faithful re-creation of a past theatrical age to the edge of caricature.” I would counter with the observation that that is the point. The theatre Pinero was recreating was one that hinged on operatics, pantomime and slapstick. His band of players, the ‘gypsies’, are shunned from high society, in the form of Sir William, Vice-Chancellor of Cavendish Square, played excellently by Ron Cook, and Rose cannot feel at home in the high house of so many rules – no sneezing, no singing, a silent half hour after supper, no courting, no privacy and no noise during whist. Sir William and his sister Trafalgar are caricatured from the start as snobbish aristocrats, but after Rose leaves and Arthur, heartbroken, sneaks out and runs away to Bristol, Sir William undergoes a sudden and moving change of heart. The caricature in the play underlines how people are caricatured by others in real life. When they show feeling, there is absolute silence in the theatre.

I was one of the lucky audience members who had the £10 front row tickets, and found myself giggling halfway through the last act when pushed over in my seat to make way for the character of O’Dwyer, the Irish theatre-owner, (played by Jamie Beamish) who scribbled some hilarious notes on his notebook props (“Freezing”, “Rough day”, “Jaysus”) and returned no less than three times to take my place with a new greeting, “I’m back,” “Thought you’d got rid of me, hah?”. The cast hit just the right amount of audience interaction, specifically the scene in which Ron Cook is playing the lady Becky, who dithers about Rose to prepare for her last meeting with Sir William. There is a beautiful moment when Rose urges Becky to let the man in, and Becky turns, anxious and weary, to the audience, before leaving the stage, emerging only seconds later in perfect attire as Sir William, which gathered a huge and affectionate round of applause.

The show itself is only two and a half hours and at certain points I was afraid of snorting with laughter. It is, as the Guardian puts it, “a perfectly amiable evening”, but to make it seem that diminutive is a falsehood. Thankfully their review does go on to point out another strength -

You sense the cyclical nature of change in the delicious moment when Peter Wight as a well-cured ham announces he’s been cast in Wrench’s new play as “an old stagey, out-of-date actor”: there’s a long, pregnant silence before Maggie Steed as his wife tentatively asks, “Will you be able to get near it, James?” And it’s hard to resist the scene where Cook, now playing the tyrannical grandfather, lapses into awed reverence when confronted by the sword used by Edmund Kean in Richard III. This makes Pinero’s point that the onset of the new has to be accompanied by a celebration of the past.

Moreover, I think it is necessary to stress that the caricatures rendered on stage in conjunction with the rapid change of pace the characters experience highlight the touching individuality to each of them. By the end of the story they had proven themselves to be whole people, just as Tom had pictured.

There are only 6 more days to see it, so get your hands on a ticket now!

This show is *officially* sold out, and I’m afraid the only way you’re going to get in is if you brave the Baltic weather and queue for either day tickets or returns, which coincidentally is what led me to the beautiful steaming mug of Beechams Lemon I have in front of me, and I have to say, it was well worth it.

8am, Whitehall, London, Thursday 4 April. There are already 23 people in front of me, most with sleeping bags and layers to rival an onion. The lads and I at the back of the queue are not very hopeful, and come 10.30am, when the ticketer comes out and informs us that the day tickets are now sold out, we have reason to give up. But I am determined. So at 4.30pm, I come back and stand at the door and there I stay for 2&1/2 hours. My friends come by at 6 with coffee and cookies and there is a universal sense of ‘Please god please please let this work’. At 7, another ticketer comes out and informs me the only returns tickets available are £65. Luckily for me, a lovely lady walks over soon afterwards with a ticket and lets me pay half its face value, because that’s all I have.

At this point, I am ready to tear the play apart for not being worth the wait or the cold or the guilt for not being able to pay the lady full price, but as soon as I sit in the newly transformed Trafalgar Studio 1, with its perfectly tiered seating so each member of the audience has a full view of the stage below, and another four rows of seats behind the stage, I begin to warm up to the whole idea. The set looks like an underground bunker in World War Two — the table and chairs are all made of dingy metal, there are grilles in the floor, and an overhead cross-stage walkway covered in misted, murky glass. There are ladders at either side of the stage that lead up to the walkway, and these can slide into center stage or the wings with a gentle push. The only thing that distinguishes the beginning of the stage and the end of the audience seating are the lights.

Three trapdoors pop out of the stage floor as the lamps in the theatre switch off, so only three white lights burning up from underneath the stage can be seen. Out of each, a gas-masked figure in khaki emerges — it’s the Weird Sisters. They set the precedent for the whole play, rolling Shakespeare’s words over Scottish tongues while their voices  are mutated through the masks. After they meet, the white lights switch off as a band of soldiers wielding guns with flashlights swarm the stage and we meet Duncan and his Thanes. The use of darkness and light in the show is powerful and artfully done and fits in perfectly to the script, with all its superstitions and heaven/hell imagery. If I could shake the hand of the director, Jamie Lloyd, and the lighting designer, Adam Silverman, I would. And then I’d buy them both a drink to thank them.

The audience learn quickly that this set is versatile — the production stays quite close to the text and the rapid changes of scene are well marked in slight alterations of props. What I found particularly enjoyable was that although Macbeth is formally known as ‘The Scottish Play’, Shakespeare never wrote it for Scottish actors, yet some of the lines in this production are at their best when read in that voice: “Who could refrain,/ That had a heart to love, and in that heart/ Courage to make ‘s love known?” It also set up the difference effectively between Duncan and the rest of the characters, as he was the only one that spoke with an English accent.

Two scenes in particular stay in my mind, Act 4 Scene 1 (Macbeth learning about Birnam Wood and ‘no man born of woman’) and Scene 2 (death of Lady Macduff and her children).

I will not ruin the story for anyone who may yet see it by disclosing exactly how these scenes are performed, because in my view they are the strongest scenes in the production. Once we get past 27th April I will add to this blog post for those who will not have the pleasure of seeing it on stage and fill in what happened in as much detail as I can. Until then, I will only hint.

Regarding 4.i., I was really taken aback by James McAvoy’s performance; he was seamless on stage. The way in which he (or the director, I am unfortunately not sure who to credit) chose to interpret this scene adds another layer on to the meaning of Macbeth’s downfall and more to the point, his character development up until that point.

In 4.ii., the end was amended quite a lot in a way that improves the story. The more formal Shakespearean language (“What, you egg?”) was dispensed with and the executions were dramatically altered from what is in the text, which I must admit made it more real and therefore even more upsetting. Rather than the anonymous murderers doing Macbeth’s bidding, he appears on stage himself. (Once the run is completed, I will disclose the extent of his involvement).

I have now spoken at length about the set, the layers of interpretation and the standard of production. Now on to the actors themselves.

I was fortunate enough to be part of the show that witnessed McAvoy break the fourth wall. There was an unthinking member of the audience who took out their camera phone shortly into Act 3 Scene 1 and began recording. Right before he begins the monologue ‘To be thus is nothing,’ McAvoy saw the phone, ran towards it, still very much Macbeth, and shouted, ‘Turn the f****** camera off!’ Everyone clapped immediately, and he apologised and returned to the stage, carrying on without fault. It was a wonderful thing to behold to witness how skilfully he can concentrate on his performance. After the show ended and the cast came out for applause, McAvoy apologised again and invited any audience members who wished to stay behind to remain for a post-show discussion, during which he apologised again to his colleagues and any audience members who were offended at his use of expletives. Frankly, as a fellow Celt, I endorse it. But that is not the impression I want to leave you with of his performance. I tell that story only to illustrate the devotion to his craft. He is, needless to say, a potent and powerful actor and I felt he would not disappoint, having enjoyed his acting in films like The Last Station and Atonement. Fortunately, I was proven right. As Macbeth, McAvoy employs a fearsome energy on stage and he is not afraid to hurt himself, falling off and jumping on moving ladders, chairs, tables and throughout he gives a graphic and convincing performance. There is no doubt as to how much of himself he puts into it – everything.

Claire Foy was Lady Macbeth and a commanding lady she was. I had never had the pleasure of seeing her before, but her exact rendition of the character was paralleled only by James McAvoy. She also was not afraid to raise her voice or hurt herself on stage and even though physically she is not an intimidating person, her physicality and intensity as Lady Macbeth made it easy to understand how that woman could dominate a King.

I think a word also needs to be given to Jamie Ballard, Macduff. Having read the text before, I had an impression of Macduff as a flake who lands in a sufficient amount of good and bad luck to overthrow Macbeth. But Ballard’s performance in 4.iii., when Macduff learns of his family’s murder, shone a new light on the character for me, as a dignified, grief-stricken, but determined nobleman.

After bearing witness to the show, it is no surprise to me that is sold out for the rest of its run, but Fortune favours the brave, and it seems, the determined. Day tickets are £10 and go on sale at 10.30am every morning, so bring your canteen and your blankets down to 14 Whitehall before 27th April. It is worth the wait.

Running at the Old Vic Theatre until 25 May 2013

This is a play about right and wrong, but also about our petty judgements of others. The summary on the Old Vic’s website is as follows:

Driven by a passionate belief in justice whatever the personal cost, Arthur Winslow sets out to prove his son’s innocence when he is accused of theft. This moving story pits the rights of the individual against the will of the state. A fight for truth, played out under the media spotlight, tests one family to its very limit.

While an accurate outline of the plot, there is much more to this play than a fourteen year old supposedly stealing a postal order. The review in The Observer was notably short-sighted in what it described, though quite rightly pointed out one of the star acts – “Peter Sullivan is outstanding as the barrister Sir Robert Morton – especially in his hilariously mechanical way of accepting compliments.” One example that stays in my mind is this -

Catherine: I’m afraid I have a confession and an apology to make to you, Sir Robert.

Sir Robert: Dear lady, I’m sure the one is rash and the other is superfluous. I would far rather hear neither.

Each character in this play seems to have a hidden agenda – first Catherine, a suffragette, who seems to be fighting for justice because she enjoys fighting, next Dickie, who wastes away his father’s money ‘studying’ at Oxford and learning the ‘Bunny hop’, Sir Robert, aspiring to be a celebrity solicitor and possibly Lord Chief Justice, and lastly Arthur Winslow, clinging on to Edwardian values and resisting change of any kind. But the impressions given off in the early scenes entirely belie the characters’ true motives. By the conclusion of the story, there is a strong sense of duty and dignity to each person on stage.

The strongest points of this production, aside from the beautiful and elegant set, the tempo and timing, are the touching and subtle changes in each of the actors’ performances. Naomi Frederick as Catherine Winslow is one of the central characters, always involved in the action as a go-between for her father Arthur, Ronnie, the wronged boy in question, and Sir Robert, the one hope for justice, and in this role as internal liaison, her reactions to each person and event jump from one extreme to the next. It would be an easy role to play slapstick or sarcastic, but Ms Frederick is a very measured figure, filled with rightful indignation and fury one moment but equally soft and compassionate the next. At the beginning of the play she hates Sir Robert for his stance on trade unionism – the verbal sparring between Ms Frederick and Mr Sullivan was a fearsome thing to behold – but her view of him alters as she sees him change also over the course of the court case, until they are equals.

The play was inspired by an actual event, which set a legal precedent: the case of Stonyhurst College alumnus George Archer-Shee, a cadet at Osborne in 1908, who was accused of stealing a postal order from a fellow cadet. His elder brother, Major Martin Archer-Shee, was convinced of his innocence and persuaded his father to engage lawyers. The most respected barrister of the day, Sir Edward Carson, was also persuaded of his innocence and insisted on the case coming to court. On the fourth day of the trial, the Solicitor General accepted that Archer-Shee was innocent, and ultimately the family was paid compensation.

I subsequently found out that, at the age of 19, George Archer-Shee was killed in World War I at the First Battle of Ypres. His name is inscribed on the war memorial in the village of Woodchester, Gloucestershire, where his parents lived; on the memorial plaque outside the Catholic St Mary on the Quay church in Bristol city centre, where he had been an altar boy; and on Tablet 35 of the Menin Gate in Ypres, as he has no known grave.

The Winslow Boy was written in 1946, shortly after the end of World War II, and the story at first does seem a storm in a teacup, especially in comparison to what its audiences would have recently experienced. However, that is the genius of Terence Rattigan’s writing — the play at its base focuses on an underdog, fighting the powers that be in a seemingly hopeless struggle for what is right, while also passing sharp comment on the ways in which society has come to make instant and often false impressions of others.

It goes without saying, of course, that the Old Vic is a wonderful environment for this story, and the cast a very strong and talented crew. I will not attempt to criticise the technical aspects of the production, as I do not have enough experience to pass comment, only to say, it was seamless and thoroughly enjoyable, and if you have some pocket money and a free night in your schedule, there is nowhere else you should be.

(Translated from Hermann Hesse’s ‘Der Liebende’)

See, the day slows itself in defiance of
That space which advances after evening:
Rising becomes standing and standing, lying,
And the willing recumbent blurs -

Mountains lie quiet, resplendent with stars,
But Time shimmers in those also,
Oh, in my wild heart,
Immortality spends the night homeless.
(Translation of Rainer Marie Rilke’s ‘Wunderliches Wort: die Zeit vertreiben!’)