Whip Smart

by Kit Brennan

  He was at home—this time, alone. And very surprised to see me.

  “Don’t worry, George, I’m not here for you,” I said, swanning into his drawing room and flinging my reticule down on the chair upon which I’d found him bouncing the fat, white ass of a third-rate actress named Angel six months before. “I need a favour.”

  “Do you know your heel of a husband has sued me?” George retorted. “He’s filed papers suing me for ‘criminal conversation’ with his wife—that is, with you.”

  I had to laugh at the legal euphemism.

  “Well, he’s suing me for divorce,” I said. “When’s your court date?”

  “Middle of September.”

  “Mine is earlier. I don’t think I’ll be here.”

  “For God’s sake, Rosie.”

  “I’m serious—and don’t call me that.”

  “Where’ve you been, anyway?”

  “Mouldering in Scotland with my damned relatives, no thanks to you,” I snapped. “I need the name of the very best teacher in London, George. Acting teacher. And don’t you dare laugh.”

  It was all so hard to believe, standing there looking at him, that day of my return. The man I’d loved to distraction. I’d wasted my stepfather’s present of a nest egg on him; George always seemed to be short when it came time to pay a bill. It had all ended when, planning his twentieth birthday celebration, I’d been tripping around for presents and edibles. I was close to his lodgings and needed a rest before our big night, so I’d stopped there. He was at his club—or so I thought. For a moment I didn’t recognize the sounds coming from behind his door. My brain didn’t take it in. I used the key, the door swung wide, and there at the end of the corridor was the coarse, slatternly actress George had taken me to meet one night after a musical play: Angel. Stark naked but for her boots, straddling a similarly naked George. My parcels tumbled to the floor, and before I knew what I was doing I’d grabbed up George’s riding whip from his hall table, rushed towards them flourishing it, and walloped the blowsy slut across the shoulders several times. She fell backwards howling as George wrenched the whip from my hand. Angel scrabbled crab-like across the parquet towards her crumpled, abominable clothing.

  “You filthy, lying cad!” I’d screamed at him, and then advanced on the tart. “Put your clothes on and get out of my house!”

  George grabbed my arm in a viselike grip. “Not your house, Rosie. Mine. I didn’t expect you. Leave her alone.”

  I’d twisted away and grabbed up the whip again, but quick as a flash he’d held the end. We wrestled wordlessly, glaring into each other’s eyes, ’til it snapped. Then I spat at him. And he—the rat, the louse—stood there, naked, his member still half stiff with unfinished business, my spit trickling from his cheek onto its tip, while Angel moaned away in the corner. Oh, I could have killed him. I could have died. I wish I had, one or either. And then he gutted me.

  “Go away, Rosie,” he’d said.

  Just seeing him again, still handsome and still rich, I needed to hurt someone! Scream!

  “Acting lessons, let me think . . .” He was musing away, stroking his sideburns, and I longed to give one a mighty yank. “Miss Fanny Kelly might do. She set herself up with her own theatre and school last year.”

  “Fanny Kelly?”

  “Drury Lane, acted with Kean. Decades ago now.”

  I longed to give him another cut with a riding crop; his new one lay on the hall table. “Thank you for nothing.” I retrieved my reticule and swirled past.

  “You’re a fine piece of horseflesh, Rosana. Keep your looks and you’ll go far.”

  “And you’re a provincial little stink-brain. Say hello to Mama.”

  Damnable man! Could all this peril and international skullduggery really have begun with that one suggestion for an acting teacher?

  That balmy May, I knew that I had become a ravishing young woman. (I like to believe I still am, but after all I’ve been through . . . I won’t think about that now.) My best features are my thick and lustrous blue-black hair, eyes that sparkle like sapphires, high, pert breasts, and the smallest of waists. I have an instep like no other—an asset for dancing—so arched that it appears almost tortured, though of course it is not. My legs are long, strong and shapely from years of riding and running about as a young savage in India—chasing monkeys up into the trees, riding my hairy pony at breakneck pace across the rifle range. My fingers are slim and elegant, my lips naturally full and dark crimson (particularly when I bite them). For these and other reasons, I had realized I must strike while the iron was hot, let nothing stop me from climbing as high as I could in as short a time as possible. But what was I wishing to climb towards? I wasn’t too sure about that. I fancied fame, but wasn’t sure why. I wished to be known for something, to excel at something, but I didn’t know what. I yearned for love, but I was head shy, thanks to that cad George, though horses and men (for the most part) were high on my list of pleasures. I was a simple creature, I admit that, why not?

  Miss Fanny Kelly’s school was situated in Soho, on Dean Street. I strolled past and was lucky enough to spot the woman herself getting out of her carriage. She was showily dressed, obviously a woman of the arts, possessing confidence and gusto. A little given to fat, but not too much considering her age.

  I booked an appointment for the following morning and dressed myself in my best turnout and bonnet. Miss Kelly saw me in her office, a commodious room on the second floor. She came swiftly to the point: “A guinea per hour is the fee.” I couldn’t help but gasp, but recovered by turning it into a delicate sneeze. “God bless you. Now stand.”

  I did so, and she went on, “Walk away from me, let me see you.” I stalked rather self-consciously to the window, then wasn’t sure what she wanted next. “Mmpf. Turn around—gracefully!” I suppose I hadn’t.

  “Now, take up the fan on the windowsill there. If I ask you to show anger, for example, while using the fan, how would you do so?” I snapped it open and fanned myself vigorously. “Oh dear. And jealousy?” I did so again, but with slightly less force. She was beginning to confuse me. “Put that down. Show me your best curtsy.” I did, and she looked very severe.

  “Now I would like to hear you recite. Use these lines,” she snapped, and passed me a sheet of paper on which was written one of the Shakespeare sonnets.

  I cleared my throat. “Shall I compare thee—”

  “Oh, stop.” She wasn’t even looking at me. I was beginning to feel anger for real. “Try to modulate your voice—and separate your words. Go ahead.”

  And the grueling interrogation went on in this manner. Finally, Miss Kelly pulled a delicate pocket watch from inside her bodice and studied its face. “Your voice is . . . tiny. No potential for amplification whatsoever apparent. Your movements are jerky, unrefined. Yet I think you have something, some quality, which I cannot put my finger on. I will take you, twice a week, for two months. After that, we shall see.” She held out her hand. “One guinea, then.”

  Now I had another difficult problem, thanks to Miss Kelly’s exorbitant fee. I could no longer luxuriate (or equivocate) with scruples. This required a game plan—and the strategy of a marshal in the field.

  I took myself to the dining room of one of the very finest hotels and asked to be seated at a prominent table. Then I busied myself with the contents of my reticule. A brace of gentlemen approached, one at a time, but were startled off by something or other. Then a man—smelling strongly of lavender—slid his well-dressed bottom onto the seat beside mine. “Excuse me, miss,” he cooed, “but are you here on your own?”

  This was so exactly what I had imagined might be said that I almost burst out laughing. I looked up and recognized a gentleman I’d seen several times before at the theatre; he had a kind face, a high colour, and a wicked light in his eyes. I admit I was extremely nervous when I answered, “I am here alone, yes. To my chagrin.”

  “Not any longer,” said he, and leaned towards me. “Allow me to introduce myself. I
am Lord James Howard Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury. You may call me Howard.”

  “And I am Eliza Rosana Gilbert.”

  “Delightful.”

  He was a member of the House of Commons and a generous, happy peer. He’d only recently become both of those things: His wife had convinced him to cease his travels abroad and come home to “do something useful.” Then his father died shortly thereafter. I liked him immediately because of his well-travelled outlook, his love of foreign ways and foreign foods. He was in the first flush of middle age and very pleased with himself. He ordered us a splendid meal, and I ate every scrap. I watched him devour his sweet and felt again the first tingles of anxiety as he licked his fingers clean, apologizing for his appetite.

  “Not at all, I find it appealing in a man,” I said.

  “Will you find this appealing, I hope?” he replied. “I have a room on the fifth floor. Will you follow me there in, say, five minutes?”

  Now I must make the leap, I thought. But what could I do? The die was cast. The waiters had already been observing me archly throughout the course of the meal. No time for a sudden burst of shyness now; it was too late for that, surely. But how to go about it? My heart was skipping around in my chest in trepidation. The marshal marshaled her forces. “I cannot think what you mean, sir. I am not one of those women.”

  “No, no, of course not. Forgive me for implying . . . The truth is, I happen to have a sweet necklace—mostly diamonds—that I have been visualizing all evening clasped around your little neck, to set off and enhance your many charms. May I please, Miss Eliza Rosana . . . ? Present it to you with my compliments?”

  Probably a gift he’d purchased for his wife, to be presented upon his return to the country at the end of the week. Never mind, he could buy her another.

  “I would be charmed to see it.”

  “Room five hundred and ten.”

  Ignoring the muted insinuations of the waiters, who spoke to each other behind their hands as I waited the five minutes, I was surprised to find myself so apprehensive. I’d never been to bed with a man so much older. I didn’t know what to expect. Would I have to do all the work? Would it be embarrassing? What would his appearance be, naked? Outside his door, I hemmed and hawed; perhaps anticipating this, the earl opened the door before I even knocked and ushered me in. Then, we just looked at each other. A funny grin came over his face, and he stepped closer. “You are so very lovely, my dear,” he said, and then he kissed me sweetly and deeply. His lips felt like those of a younger man, and soon I could hear that his breathing was accelerating like that of a much younger man. For my part, I felt shy, which was surprising—but also I was now intrigued. What would it be like?

  “Eliza Rosana, may I make your intimate acquaintance?” he asked me.

  That made me laugh, which felt good.

  “I take that as a yes?” And he kissed me again, before turning me around and helping to unlace me. At every step of the unlacing, he murmured his admiration and kissed each new piece of me. It was really quite endearing. As I stepped out of my dress, like Aphrodite upon her clamshell, he stood still as a statue, drinking me in.

  And then things sped up. Although rather stout, Howard could fling his clothes off with remarkable alacrity, and he took such noisy enjoyment in all the various remaining stages of necktie loosening, breeches unraveling, boot unscrambling, and so on that he had me laughing long before he lay me back on the bed. I find laughter a wonderful tonic in the bedchamber, and luckily he did too. It had been such a long time since I’d been with a man (all of the six lonely months I’d endured in Edinburgh) that I was soon energetically enthusiastic. Never mind the pretense of modesty, and real skittishness, that I’d begun with. I enjoyed the honesty of his protruding tummy, like that of a two-year-old playing in his washtub. Howard was a man well past the point of holding back because of some self-imposed vanity. He let himself be exactly who he was, running my dark hair through his hands and burying his nose in the scented locks, tickling my skin with the tips of his fingers, letting loose a yelp of joy when he experienced his pleasure, then holding me in his arms for a little sleep afterward, which he seemed to need and treasure. I found it all interesting and different; I was aroused, certainly, but not in the feverish way that George had incited. I wasn’t called upon to race to a swift conclusion, as such—and so, in the contradictory way of these things, I enjoyed a lovely pleasure of my own, which reduced my jitters marvelously. And I adored the necklace, which he introduced with a flourish once we awoke from our nap. He asked me to sit up—I was still stark naked—and he reached to the bedside table, opening a velvet box. My first diamonds! He laid them carefully against my skin and did up the clasp. They were very cold, and then all at once as warm as my blood. I fell in love then and there; I never wanted to take them off. It turned out he had earrings to match, and before the end of that first evening I had them as well.

  The next six weeks were busy. My trial date was set for August; Thomas was actually going through with the divorce. I could hardly credit it and was saddened when I considered that he really must have hated me. The earl remained obsessively discreet, so most of our subsequent meetings took place in my lodgings. He’d have large baskets of food and drink sent over beforehand; he would arrive after dark, trailing the night air and his sense of boyish pleasure in being bad.

  And my days were full of Miss Kelly’s bossiness. I’d had no idea that trying to become an actress was going to be such hard and tedious work. The lessons took place in her large, airy workroom, high above the street, with plenty of windows and a lovely smooth wooden floor. She was always carefully dressed, and so was I—as well as I could manage, that is. Some of my dresses were terribly out of date, since India has always been interminably behind the times when it comes to fashion, and my stepfather’s Scottish relatives had done little to mitigate this situation on my behalf. This was an ongoing embarrassment to me, and several times I caught Miss Kelly looking me up and down with a Londoner’s disdain.

  Her favourite teaching tool was the work of Congreve, particularly The Way of the World. She was greatly enamoured of the fan.

  “The women duel, too, Miss Gilbert, but verbally. Feel the thrust and parry of the words, and the literal pointing up—often with the fan—of the wit.”

  When I thought of fighting a duel, however, my body couldn’t help but tense and long to physically rush about. “No!” she would cry. “Ladylike, ladylike! Far too much physicality.”

  “But what the character wants is aggressive!”

  “Not for the women; that is not how they operate. Formality on the surface, hostility well hidden. Have you seen the Spanish women with their fans?” She snapped hers in my face. “All fan gestures to men have sensual implications, and the slower the movement the more intense the implication. Do you follow me?”

  “Oh yes.” My fan caressed the imaginary arm of a grandee, moving lower, and ending with a mischievous flick.

  At this, she gave me quite the look. Perhaps it was this little indiscretion, this braggadocio, on my part that gave her the dastardly idea in the first place. The woman would do anything for money.

  “Where were you raised?”

  “Many places,” I told her. “India.”

  “Aha. That odd, displeasing lilting—it is barbaric, stop it at once.” She looked me up and down in a calculated manner. “Where else have you lived?”

  Still hoping to impress, silly me, I lied, “Oh, Paris. C’est joli!” I’d been accustomed to fabricating, teasing provincial young girls during the many dreary years I’d lived at the Ladies’ Boarding Academy in Bath, lonely and bored with my real life. At age twelve I’d declared I would go by Rosana because it had a Continental zing, and had severely exasperated the Misses Aldridge by refusing to answer any longer to Eliza.

  “Spain?” Miss Kelly prodded.

  “Sí. Seville for a summer, and of course Madrid.” Pure invention.

  “Then how can you be so dense about the powe
r of the fan? Other than carnal, which you seem to understand all too well.”

  In the middle of the second month, Miss Kelly finally allowed me to play a scene, with herself as my partner. For reasons unknown to me, she had invited a strange little man with dyed jet-black hair and an appearance of being shriveled by the sun. She didn’t bother to introduce us, just had him sit off to the side while we went at it, and being observed by this fellow, who contorted himself into excited shapes and squiggles (in turn grabbing his hair, covering his eyes while peeking through his fingers, then corkscrewing his legs around one another)—well, I failed the scene utterly.

  “You cannot seem to grasp the first rule of the theatre, Miss Gilbert!” an exasperated Miss Kelly cried, flinging down her pages. “You do not actually feel this, you portray it! God in Heaven!”

  “But I wish . . . I want . . .”

  “Wishing and wanting will not bring it to you, girl. I give up, you are not an actress.”

  “But I must be something!” I began to tremble, horrified to have come so far and have spent so much only to be told I was terrible.

  “You possess an impressive self-importance, this is true,” the termagant continued. “A strong will. And an abnormally restless body. Perhaps you are a dancer. Although, since you have no training there, that is likely also an avenue that is closed to you. What do you think, Mr. Hernandez?”

  The dark little gnome leapt to his feet and pointed one toe. “Maravilloso. I think she will do, Miss Kelly. She is exactamente what we—that is, I—am looking for.”

  “Good. Then I’ll leave you.” And without further ado, other than to take my guinea from me, my teacher swept off.

  I was at a loss. Here I was, sweaty from effort, left to deal with this stranger who thought I would do. Do what?