It was on this very stage that his love of acting had begun.
“As you know, today is the year nine careers fayre.” Dawn continued speaking, and Gabe forced himself to concentrate not wanting to miss his cue. “And this morning, we have a special guest come to talk to all of you about his job. He’s going to speak for a few minutes. Then, he’s agreed to answer any questions you may have. He’ll also be at the fayre today along with many other people of varying professions. We have someone from the fire service, police, military, the church, even someone from the houses of parliament if anyone wants to be a politician. So, if any of the year nines were thinking of not coming, this may be your incentive to attend. So, without further ado, let me introduce Gabriel Tyler.”
The kids screamed. They began to whistle and clap.
Gabe smiled and headed out onto the stage to find every single person in the hall on their feet. He still found this type of adulation embarrassing. As far as he was concerned, he was an ordinary bloke who went to work each day just like everyone else did. Once silence fell, he stepped up to the podium. “Thank you, Miss Stannis. Good morning, everyone.”
As if rehearsed, but he knew it wasn’t, the school chorused, “Good morning, Mr. Tyler.”
He grinned. “This is just like old times. You know my acting career began here, right on this very stage in a school production of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ I was the scarecrow. From what I remember, it was the first time a year seven had been cast in a leading role. So, what’s it like being an actor?” He paused. “It’s fun. It is incredibly hard work redoing things over and over until the director says it’s right—especially when you’re in makeup at half three in the morning and still sitting there five hours later. It can be frustrating, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
~*~
An hour later, Dawn led Gabe to the staff room. “I wasn’t expecting the kids to ask so many questions.”
He pushed a hand through his brown hair, which he wore parted on the left. His blue eyes twinkled. “I know its par for the course, but it was nice to be asked something different.”
She moved to the side and grabbed a couple of mugs. “Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee with no milk and one sugar, please. Most interviews relate to a specific project and not much thought goes into them. Which is why by the end of interview seven, I have the answers down to a fine art. But those kids made me think.”
“Especially what would you do if you weren’t an actor.”
Gabe laughed and took the mug she offered. “Thank you. Well, yeah. At least being a bin man I could go back to bed after lunch.”
Dawn grinned. “That would be nice.” She led him to the chairs under the window and sat down. She had to admit, albeit only to herself, her curiosity had been piqued by some of his answers. “You sidestepped the girlfriend one quite nicely.”
He chuckled. “I’ve been doing that for years with my mother. She’d prefer me to be married and have ten kids by now, but it’ll happen in God’s own time, when the right woman comes along. I don’t see the point in starting a relationship purely to satisfy the press or my mother.” He sipped his coffee. “What about you? Why did you become a teacher?”
“I studied geography at university and had such great plans. This was my back up career.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” His intense blue eyes gazed at her over the rim of his cup, and Dawn found herself being pulled into them.
What must it be like to act opposite him? To have him wrap his arms around you? Have those full, masculine lips press against your cheek…
She shook herself hard. Enough of the fan girl malarkey. “My first choice was to be a volcanologist or find a way to predict earthquakes, but that didn’t work out, so I’m the geography teacher. I teach about places, rocks, and weather. Try and enthuse the next generation instead, and I get to throw in a volcano now and then.”
He tilted his head. “Sounds like an intriguing story there.”
She shrugged. “Not really.” And it wasn’t something she intended to talk about either. “Teaching is safer.”
The door opened. “Sorry to interrupt, Dawn, but I can’t find the presentation for your class.”
Dawn glanced at the head teacher. He was covering her lessons for the day. “That’s because it’s in my pocket.” Her cheeks warmed a little as she handed over the flash drive. “Here. Sorry.”
He took it. “Thanks.” He held out his other hand. “Nigel Wilder, head teacher.”
“Gabriel Tyler.” Gabe shook his hand.
“Pleasure to meet you. The wife is a huge fan of yours and will be incredibly jealous when I tell her I’ve met you. I’m not sure I could do your job having heard you speak this morning.”
“I definitely couldn’t do yours,” Gabe said.
The head teacher grinned. “You’re welcome to try. You did a good job in
Warwick High
.”
“
Warwick High
is as close to teaching as I want to get.”
“Well, if you change your mind… Better go before Dawn’s class riots.”
Gabe sat down again. “I don’t suppose for a minute that
Warwick High
is anything close to the real thing.”
“Probably not—and he’s kidding about my class rioting. They only do that in history.” She took a long drink of coffee, guessing from his smile that he’d gotten her pun without her having to explain it. Which made a nice change. “Unlike our fictional counterparts, we have hours of marking and lesson prep which eat into the day and the long holidays.”
“Can’t you reuse lessons from one year to the next?”
“Sometimes, but the syllabus changes so much that most of it is useless.” She drained her coffee and set the cup down.
“Do you ever do practical work with them?”
“A fair bit.” She grinned. “We make volcanoes, rain gauges, and study wave motion using a slinky. And then there are the field trips.”
“I remember those.” He settled back in the chair finally seeming to relax a little. “We went on one trip in the rain to an open air museum that had all these really old houses from medieval days.”
“Singleton. Yeah, we still do that one. I expect it’s changed a lot since you went.”
Gabe grinned. “The most exciting part, other than seeing the Tudor house, was sneaking up on the teachers and taking photos of them eating lunch.”
Dawn laughed. “The kids still do that, too.”
He studied her, yet she didn’t mind. “Am I keeping you from a class?”
“No. I’m meant to be organizing the fayre, but this hour is my designated PPA session for the week. I’m supposed to be doing paperwork.”
He set his cup down. “My least favorite subject.”
“Mine too.”
The door opened again, and the head of drama came in. Dawn could tell from the way he walked he was a man with a mission. He crossed over to them. “Ray Patterson. I was wondering if you were free to pop into the year eleven drama class and do some work with them, Mr. Tyler.”
Gabe nodded. “I’d love to if Miss Stannis can spare me.”
“Sure. I’ll need you from lunchtime though.” Dawn shoved aside the shaft of disappointment as Gabe stood and followed Ray from the room.
Gabe was nothing like she’d expected. And was his title really ‘Lord’? Because he didn’t behave the way she’d expected a lord to, and he hadn’t mentioned his title once.
3
Gabe found that the children lapped up what he told them eager to learn the technical aspects of stage fighting and stage presence. He showed them how to adjust their height to change persona, alter the mood of the characters, as well as how to use their voices. As the bell for lunch rang, he made his way back to the staff room.
He found a quiet corner to sit and eat although he wasn’t particularly hungry. Dawn entered and pulled something from the fridge. He studied her. Dawn Stannis combined beauty with intelligence. He knew there was a story behind her becoming a teacher rather than a volcanologist and wondered if he’d ever find out. Would she ever trust him enough to tell him? She came over to him with two cups in her hand. She held one out to him. “Black coffee, one sugar.”
“You remembered. Thank you.”
She sat beside him. “You’re welcome.”
Gabe swallowed a mouthful of coffee as Dawn took a seat with him. “Did you get any of your paperwork done?”
She laughed. “No. Unless you count doing table arrangements as paperwork. I’ve been trying not to sit the Labor MP next to the Conservative town councilor in case they start another fight—even if it is a verbal one.”
“Is that likely to happen?”
“It did last year.” She paused. “Yes, I believe in being direct and honest. There isn’t much point otherwise.”
He nodded. “Exactly. Too much fakery in my line of work. It’s nice just to be myself occasionally.” He nodded to her cross. “Am I right in assuming you’re a Christian?”
Dawn smiled. “It’s refreshing to find someone as direct as me. Well, according to Liam, we both go to the same church.”
“Liam Page?”
Dawn nodded. “He gave me your phone number. He should be around somewhere, but he’s on lunchtime detention duty today. He teaches English.” She sipped her coffee. “I’m a Christian. Grew up in the church in London, rebelled as a teenager, and drove my parents to distraction no doubt. And I mean rebelled. I started smoking at twelve, drinking at fourteen. Hid it pretty well, or so I thought. Anyway, I found God, well He found me, at my lowest point. Stopped smoking, stopped drinking—well to excess anyway, and here I am.”
Gabe studied her. She was right about being direct. “What happened if you don’t mind me asking?”
“The kids I ran with got caught up in drugs. I didn’t take them; I had more sense. Plus which, I think my mother would have disowned me. My boyfriend, I guess you’d call him, took a load. He got high, drank half a bottle of his dad’s scotch, and stole the keys to his dad’s sports car. He wrapped it around a tree and he, his sister, and his mate died. Had I gone with them, like they wanted me to, I would have been killed too. But Mum had given me a curfew, and although I normally ignored it, that one night I decided to be home when she told me.”
Gabe straightened in stunned shock. “Wow.” He hadn’t expected a story like that, or for her to be so honest.
“Anyway, it made me think, and God used it to bring me back to Him. What about you?”
“Nothing so dramatic.” He put the lid back on his sandwich box. “I’ve always gone to church, so it was more of a natural progression.”
“No less of a miracle though.”
Gabe smiled. “And it’s not easy in my line of work, either.”
“I can imagine.” Dawn paused, running her fingertip around the rim of her cup. “Do you…?” She broke off, a hint of red filling her cheeks.
“Go on.”
“What if the film calls for bedroom scenes or something? Would you do it?”
Gabe sipped his coffee. “That depends on the script, and whether the couple are married, but as a general rule, no, I won’t strip, and I won’t film in bed. I won’t swear in a film, either. Sometimes that requires negotiating mid-filming with the director to change the lines, but if that’s what it takes, then I’ll do it.”
He’d never really thought about how other people would view his work.
To him it was a job—a role he was playing. None of it was him.
He prayed over each role before accepting it and kept each character true to the book or script. He made a point of never doing anything which would compromise him or his faith. Sure, a few of his earlier roles made him cringe, and a few had earned him a lecture from his parents—mostly from his mother—on bringing the title into disrepute.
But no one knew that. At least, not in the circles he kept, and so far, the press reporting had kept his two lives separate, curtesy of an unspoken agreement. Not that he expected that to last forever. He wasn’t that naïve. And when they did, he’d just have to deal with it and pray his reputation and demo reel kept the work coming in for the right reasons.
He looked at the woman who sat next to him and smiled. He loved the fact that she was treating him like a normal person. “What do you do in your spare time?”
“What spare time?” Her laugh was like a peal of church bells across a frosty village green. A patch of sun on a cloudy day. “I cross stitch and read a lot. And I love walking.”
“I read too,” he said. “And play golf occasionally.” Although that was kind of expected, and he got out of it when he could. “But I love horse riding.”
“I haven’t ridden in years. However, I was the under fifteen county table tennis champion three years on the trot.”
He tilted his head. “Impressive. Do you still play?”
“Sometimes.” She put her cup down and stood as the bell rang. “I should start setting up. Some of the sixth formers are going to help with the tables.”
Gabe stood. “Show me what I can do to help.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” she protested.
“I’m offering.” He smiled. “I’m here, use me.”
He spent the next half hour happily moving tables, something he was never allowed to do at home, not as a child, and definitely not now.
He took pleasure in lifting the heavy boxes from his car and carrying them inside to the small table he’d been allocated.
“What are those?” Dawn asked.
“Leaflets on acting schools, local theatre reps, theatre schools, and so on. And the box of photos my brother told me I’d need. But I’ll only sign one
if
they ask an acting related question.”
“Good idea.” She turned away to greet the rest of the guests.
Gabe busied himself with setting up his table. He put out all the leaflets and a few of the photos in a pile. The rest he kept in the box by his chair. He glanced up as a journalist and photographer from the local paper arrived.
Jeffery Palmer. It had to be the one journalist who knew who Gabe really was—or at least didn’t honor the unspoken agreement to keep both lives separate. He made a beeline towards him. “Lord Tyler, fancy seeing you here. Are you opening this shindig?”
“No, here to promote acting, actually.”
“I bet your mother loves that idea.”
“What about you?” Gabe swiftly turned the tables. “Are you working or speaking?”