Page 59 of Best Supporting Actor
“I’ll make us some dinner, then.” Jay stood up, hoping Tag hadn’t noticed his stupid overreaction. “Pasta okay?”
“You know,” Tag said, “you don’t have to keep feeding me…”
“Fine, I’ll make pasta for me, and you can sit in the corner with your bread and water.”
“Ugh.” Tag pushed easily to his feet. He was very limber; Jay had noticed that in rehearsals too. Must be the yoga. “Iampaying you back for all this.”
“I know you are,” Jay said, seriously. “In the meantime, I have a packet of penne and some tomato-and-basil sauce in a jar. If you’re interested in this gourmet meal?”
“How the other half lives,” Tag said, sounding amused.
“It’s not all champagne and caviar, you know.”
“I hope it’s posh sauce in a jar… Like, Harrods or something.”
Jay turned to the kitchen. “I don’t know where it’s from. I asked Carly to get some food in…”
“Oh my God, that’s worse!” Tag exclaimed, prodding him in the ribs. “You got your PA to do your shopping?”
Jay laughed, squirming away from Tag’s fingers. “Okay, okay, thatisworse. You’re right.”
They carried on like that, bickering amiably while Jay got the pasta cooking and Tag tipped a bag of salad into two bowls. After they’d eaten at the little glass table by the window, they headed out. The overcast day had turned into a gloomy evening, the air warm with the promise of approaching rain, and Jay was glad the cinema was only a short twenty-minute walk away.
Slipping in after the house lights had gone down, with a warm box of salty popcorn Tag had insisted on buying, they found their seats while the adverts were playing. It wasn’t full—perhaps a dozen other people were scattered across the small auditorium—and nobody paid them any undue attention. Jay settled in happily as the feature began, conscious of Tag in the seat next to him, their elbows almost touching.
The story was as familiar as it was tragic. So much senseless death, so much wasted potential. As he watched the camera linger on Owen’s body, prone on the wooded riverbank, he thought of the Sassoon he’d come to know through Bea’s script—thought of the grief, the envy, and the love Sassoon had felt for Owen as his own life had continued onward while Owen’s was cut desperately short.
When Owen’s mother received the news of her son's death just as the victory bells were peeling out on Armistice Day, Jay heard a sniffle from his right and glanced at Tag. Full of life and passion and talent, Tag wasn’t dissimilar to Owen, and in that instant, Jay understood something of what it must have been like for Sassoon to continue on without him. To fade and age, to slowly, bit by bit, lose the youth and vitality that Owen, in death, had retained.
Tag turned his head, his eyes bright in the light from the screen. “I always cry at films,” he confided in a whisper.
“Me too,” Jay whispered back, pressing his shoulder against Tag’s in solidarity and feeling Tag press back. Neither of them pulled away until the credits started to roll.
They were quiet on the way home, both lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, as they headed down to walk back along the river, Tag said, “Do you think they were lovers?”
“Sassoon and Owen?” Jay looked at him; Tag’s expression was thoughtful, distant. “I don’t know. Probably not. What do you think?”
“I think Owen was properly in love with Sassoon. I’m sure of that, even if it was half hero-worship. Owen loved him.”
Jay thought about it some more. “If they weren’t lovers, I think Sassoon must have regretted it later. When he looked back, I think he recognised in Owen something he’d spend the rest of his life chasing.”
“A kindred spirit, you mean?”
“Or a soulmate, perhaps, if that’s not too sentimental.” They’d stopped by the river’s edge, standing side by side, the lights from the other bank gleaming in the dark water. “In our play, Sassoon thinks that he envies Owen’s fame and his talent, but I wonder…” He glanced at Tag, at his handsome profile, his crop of black hair stirring in the night breeze, and felt a sudden clarity. “Maybe it isn’t really envy he’s feeling?”
“What then?”
Jay thought. “Maybe… regret.”
Tag considered that; then he nodded thoughtfully. “He regrets what they could have had.”
“More than that, I think. He regrets that, together, they could have achieved more than either of them managed alone. Sassoon could have nurtured Owen’s career. And Owen’s talent—his love, maybe—could have inspired Sassoon to greatness again.”
Tag made a soft sound of surprise. “You think Owen was Sassoon’s lost opportunity, his path-not-taken.” He turned to Jay, eyes bright in the half-light. “How was it he described Owen’s death again?”
“A chasm in my private existence,” Jay supplied, surprised to find his voice rasping with empathy for these long-dead men. “An unhealed wound.”
After a silence, Tag reached out and took Jay’s hand. “That’s so sad.”