Free Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End by Richard Rider Page B

doesn't deserve a response, so it doesn't get one. Lindsay hears Valentine throw himself down onto the sofa with all his customary gracelessness, but the television doesn't flick into life like he expected. He can feel Valentine watching him. It's weirdly off-putting but he keeps on just to prove some vague point, studying each of the photos on the mantelpiece, the big portrait above the fireplace of Valentine and Dory laughing on swings in a snowy park, moving on to some framed snapshots and a school newspaper clipping standing on one of the shelves in the bookcase.
    "That's when I was Caliban in The Tempest," Valentine says from behind him. Lindsay bites down hard on his bottom lip so he won't laugh at the idea of Valentine doing Shakespeare, but something gives it away because Valentine makes an indignant noise and storms over to where he's standing. "Shut your face, don't take the piss cos I done acting for years and I got A in my theatre A level so fuck off, I done loads of Shakespeare."
"Did you wear tights?"
    "Shut up! I done him and Claudius in Hamlet and Sebastian and Don Adriano-" That's when Lindsay's composure cracks and he laughs out loud. It's even worse because he's been trying not to and that just makes it louder and accidentally crueller.
    "What about Titania?"
"Puck, actually. Please don't have a coronary, what's so funny?" "You hate Shakespeare."
    "Yeah, so? The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. You know this? I know this whole shitty play word perfect even other people's lines cos our teacher was Hitler. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices that if I then had waked after long sleep will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming the clouds methought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again. When that shit gets scarred on your brain it's there for life , I don't have to like it to be any good at it."
    It's a bit hilarious hearing those words in that voice. For the millionth time since the day they met, Lindsay feels awful for being surprised that Valentine's not a total idiot – although that doesn't make it any less funny, and nor does his fury at being laughed at.
    "Alright, cuntface, sit down and watch." Lindsay half expects Valentine to start acting out a one-man adaptation of Hamlet for him, but he finally stops sniggering when Valentine puts a DVD in the player and comes over to slap him lightly round the head. "I said shut up and watch."
"I think you said sit down and watch, you didn't tell me I wasn't allowed to jeer."
    "I got all my school plays I ever did right from year one nativity. My mum got them all transferred to discs when she thought I was dead, I dunno if she wanted to make up a drinking game or what."
"You shouldn't talk about your mother like that. She sounds alright."
    "She sounds alright now she's sobered up, yeah. You wanna see how shaky some of this camerawork is, though. OH my god, look, I forgot this was on this disc, it's Hair..." He skips through another few chapters then leaves the film playing, some crap song by a load of teenage theatre brats with Valentine as their king. "I wanted Claude but this other wanker sung better than me, I'm always second best. Still, I got to snog him on stage, he weren't so smug when he found that out."
"I really couldn't possibly care any less about your school plays."
     
"What if I tell you we all get our kit off and stand there willies and tits hanging out?"
    "I'd call you a fucking liar." But he's watching anyway, he can't not watch; Valentine on the television screen looks almost exactly the same as that day Lindsay grabbed him round the waist and rammed the barrel of a gun in his ear. His hair and clothes are even more stupid, which Lindsay didn't know was possible, but there he is, young and twig-thin and shockingly beautiful. "How old were you?"
    Valentine's kneeling on the sofa cushion beside