A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll and Hyde by Kevin MacNeil

Author:Kevin MacNeil [Kevin MacNeil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857900166
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

I had a pretty good feeling this was going to go bad. Woolfe had tried to clear a way for me to enter unobserved via the kitchen. He whipped out a mobile the size of a credit card. ‘Yo, Poole, my man. Can you ask Gullane and his cronies to smoke round the front of the house instead? Well, you could just tell them, I don’t know … I have plants out back that have asthma or whatever. You’ll think of something.’

Poole didn’t think of something. He must’ve taken Woolfe’s instructions verbatim. A gangling tuxedoed figure approached the merry band of smokers and said something to them which was greeted with explosive laughter and what sounded like a request to bring out more champagne.

‘Okay,’ said Woolfe. ‘Plan B.’

‘Does B stand for bugger this?’

‘B stands for be cool and follow me.’

Woolfe scurried along behind the bushes with remarkable agility. As he moved in near silence, melting into the shadows, he seemed part actual wolf, part spy. I shambled along with, I would probably concede, less grace, but with a superior heroism, pained as I was here, here and even there.

As we came to the side of the house, the braying of the men out back faded. We approached the shadowy bulk of the side of the house. A throbbing sound reverberated through my feet. Pompous classical music mixed with hip-hop beats? Ugh. But of course.

‘All right, so look up there,’ said Woolfe.

‘It’s the side of a house.’

‘There, dimwit. The window.’

‘I can’t see. Oh, hang on, is it like a square blacker bit?’

‘Those are called curtains, that’s why it’s darker. No one’s in the room. You jump up there and grab on to the windowsill. It’s the third bedroom and – well, I have East-Fortune staying tonight and he’s a smoker so I know it’s open. And he’s not in the room, he’s at the party ’cause he wouldn’t want to miss Stenton.’

‘Oh yeah, I heard he’s going to be here.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘The spirit of sarcasm. And while we’re at it, what magical trampoline do I use to get up there?’

‘It’s just a little leap, man. A kid could –’

‘My fucking legs are still broken.’

‘All right, don’t be such a drama queen.’ Woolfe paused. ‘You can’t jump at all?’

Some clouds parted around the moon and a little more light bled through, like a smudgy child’s torch straining to be a spotlight.

‘… would work. So c’mon.’

I snapped out of my reverie. Woolfe was bent in front of me, his butt pointing towards me.

‘C’mon, man.’

‘Uh.’

‘Do it.’

‘Uh.’

‘Jump on.’

‘I, uh –’

‘Climb on my back.’

‘Oh yeah, right.’ I was so stupefied at what I thought he’d been inviting me to do, climbing onto my nemesis’s shoulders felt fine, almost natural. It was only when I was sitting on his shoulders and he started to straighten his legs, raising me up, that a wave of weirdness swept over me. It was composed of three parts absurd to four parts wrong. The things we do for … reasons that escape us at the time.

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