Love With Caution [Tom Hiddleston]

The Alchemy of Loss

Notes:

Trigger warning: mention of a terror attack in London

Tom

Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! ... I never had a preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her.

I deliberately hold back from touching the necklace that hangs from my neck, even without doing so I can feel the weight of its pendant on my sternum as the train bumps its way to a halt a few stations before mine. I smile to myself because I can feel exactly what Laidslaw is saying here like it was just yesterday, and I hastily swallow the rest of my emotions lest they bubble over in a carriage full of people. Such is the risk I accepted by reading on the train, sometimes Eliot's words kick me right in the guts.

After greeting Johanna we go out together for coffee just down the street from the Donmar Warehouse, chatting on the way to the theatre for another day of auditions.
"What did you think yesterday?" she asks with a grin.
I know why she's suddenly involving me a lot more with the stage side of production rather than the administration – she thinks I'll want to go back to it.
"There were some very talented actors," I say, keeping my voice measured. "No one stood out for Petruchio, though. I'd have thought he'd be easier to cast."
"The ones you expect to be easy are always the hardest." She sips her coffee thoughtfully.
Don't say it, Jo.
"We need a Tom Hiddleston in the mix. Do you know any?" She asks good-naturedly.
"Stop. I'm not interested."
"Such a waste," she sighs. "All right. Let's see if we can find someone better."

My god we have some amazing talent in this country. By the end of the second day I'm blown away, there are a few I've heard about through my contacts at RADA, some I invited to audition myself, but some have just come completely out of the blue without formal training and I can't believe how effortless they appear. It almost confirms my decision – it took me years of blood, sweat, and a lot of tears to act like that, and it was never without effort.

"Aiden," I say to Johanna over our afternoon tea.
"You want to cast an unknown in a lead role? He dropped out of RADA in first year!"
"Because he had to support his family. He has good instincts, I think he can handle it."
"He'll need a lot of coaching, are you putting your hand up?"
I think for a few moments. "Yes. Every unknown needs someone to take a chance."
"You can give him the good news, then."

Alone in my apartment that night I finish Middlemarch and it takes me some time to collect my thoughts. Eliot was a remarkable and fascinating woman; brave and outspoken ahead of her time. She had a lot to say about the treatment and expectations of women and didn't hesitate to tell it how it was, and yet to be taken seriously she had to do so under a man's name. I make a few notes while the kettle boils – I'm sure to anyone else it would seem silly but I realised quite early on in life that holding on to an important thought isn't one of my strong points, if I don't record it in some way it's swept away like dandelion seeds in the breeze. People often ask me how I recall important quotes or ideas, how I can possibly keep that much information in my head all the time, but the truth is I just keep a lot of notes and read back over them frequently. Writing them down makes them stick.

While my tea brews I slip Middlemarch back onto the shelf – between Chekhov and Emerson's complete works – and move back to the corner where I keep the ones I want to read next. I finger the spine of each in turn, looking for something perhaps a little lighter this time around. There's no system of priority, I just choose what I feel like at the time unless there's a particular purpose to one or another. The one that catches my eye this evening was given to me by Johanna and isn't one I'd normally pick up but it comes highly recommended – Commander of the Fallen – a sci-fi thriller by Rohan Moss, an author I've never heard of. I flip it over in my hands a few times, reading the blurb on the back for the fifth time and looking for the usual author bio inside the cover – but it's not there.