The Furies: A Novel by Natalie Haynes Read Free Book Online

who?’
    ‘We could do Jerusalem .’ I picked up the newest play I’d brought for them. ‘It’s full of swearing. You might like it.’
    ‘What’s it about?’ asked Jono.
    ‘It’s about a man who lives in a caravan. The council wants to evict him.’
    Jono reached over and took the book from me, lured by the red cover and the picture of a man smoking a joint.
    ‘Looks alright,’ he said as he flipped it over to read the back. ‘Wait,’ he continued. ‘It says, “A dark comedy about contemporary life in rural England.”’ His chubby finger jabbed at the words.
    ‘Yes,’ I replied, not seeing the man-trap opening up beneath my feet.
    ‘And, “A bold and often hilarious State-of-England play.”’
    ‘It got very good reviews,’ I agreed. ‘Is that the one you’d like to do?’
    ‘Why would I want to read a play about England?’ he spat. ‘It wouldn’t have anything to do with us.’
    ‘Oh my God,’ said Annika, slamming her hand down on her desk. ‘Could you be any more pathetic?’
    His face was glowing bright red. ‘Yeah, it doesn’t matter to you because you’re not fucking Scottish. So you wouldn’t understand, would you?’
    ‘Christ, could you stop being such a victim!’ she shrieked. ‘This poor-wee-Scotland-the-Brave mentality.’ For a girl whose first language was Swedish, she could parody the Edinburgh accent unnervingly well. ‘It’s just so…’ She cast around for the word. ‘Boring.’
    She reached down to her bag. Ricky was doodling with increasing fervour, drawing himself out of the conflict.
    ‘Let’s not make a big deal out of it,’ I said, and their two furious faces both turned in my direction. I had to fight not to raise my hands. I had half a memory of a weeping supply teacher at my old school, and I knew I was heading that way myself. ‘It’s not life and death. It’s just a play. I thought you might like it, but it’s OK if you don’t, because we have plenty more to choose from. Mel, Carly – you’ve gone very quiet. Do you have any thoughts?’
    I passed two more books to them. Mel leaned forward to take one. Her sleeves were much too long, I noticed. Even as she reached forward, her hand was half-covered by the pale blue cuff of her sweater.
    ‘This one,’ said Carly, as she looked at the jacket of a new version of The Misanthrope .
    ‘No,’ said Mel. ‘I can’t stand her.’ She pointed her thumb at the film star who had appeared in the recent London revival.
    ‘OK.’ My patience had worn through. ‘Which one are you holding?’
    ‘Sophocles, The Theban Plays ,’ she replied.
    ‘Then shall we do one of those?’ I snapped. ‘It’s not set in England, it doesn’t have a hot guy dying halfway through, Keira Knightley has never appeared in it, and there are several scenes in it which I imagine Ricky would be able to draw. Will that do?’
    Ricky jumped as I said his name, then continued cross-hatching whatever he was drawing when he realised he wasn’t in trouble. The others looked blank.
    ‘What’s it about?’ asked Carly, quietly.
    ‘We’ll read Oedipus the King . That’s the first play in the book. It’s about a man who’s destined to do something terrible and tries to escape his fate.’
    ‘What’s his fate?’ she asked.
    ‘He’s destined to kill his father and marry his mother.’
    ‘That’s disgusting,’ Ricky said, starting to laugh. The tension in the room relaxed very slightly. I felt my shoulders drop an inch.
    ‘It was even more disgusting to the ancient Greeks than it is to us,’ I said, trying to remember my first year as an undergraduate, when we’d read all these Greek plays: it must have been Robert’s way of weeding out the students he didn’t think were serious enough about his art. I had written piles of essays on the reception of Greek tragedy and its historical context, silently thanking my father for having dragged me to see some of them when I was at school. It was all in my head