by Diana Norman
The actors accepted him as just another high-born devotee relishing a sniff of greasepaint. But while Félicie was undoubtedly stagestruck, Blanchard’s enthusiasm went deeper. Makepeace suspected him of intending to wrest The Duke’s away from her now that it had proved a going concern.
‘I don’t like the man,’ she said, ‘but ...’
‘I tell you, who he reminds me of,’ Murrough said, ‘Danny O’Halloran.’
‘Who’s Danny O’Halloran when he’s home?’
‘Lovely fella. There was never a wittier man nor one you’d be happier to take home to mother than our Danny. A good member of our branch of the United Irishman, so he was. Attended every meeting, listened to all our revolutionary little plans, even contributed some of his own as I remember—until he sold us all out to the English. ’ He looked down at her. ‘Most of us are still in prison thanks to Mr O’Halloran, and me only getting away with a change of name and your brother’s help, God love him.’
On the far side of the churchyard, a man was cutting the grass, scattering butterflies into the air with every swing of his scythe.
Murrough got up and raised Makepeace to her feet. ‘Go to Babbs Cove.’
‘Why Babbs Cove?’ she protested. ‘My family’s in the north.’
‘Some of it’s in France,’ he said. ‘If I can fetch it home, I will. And I imagine Babbs Cove is where we’ll make for.’ Suddenly, he kissed her. ‘Wait for me now, Mrs Hedley, because if I go, I’m coming back.’
He walked her to Fenchurch Street, shook her hand warmly and turned right. Her way was left.
She watched him head for Whitechapel. A lot of Irish in Whitechapel. A lot of Irish everywhere, she thought. Somebody had told her that out of every eleven people you passed in London, one had been born in Ireland.
‘And each one of the bastards unreliable,’ she said bitterly as Sanders joined her.
‘What bastards are those, missus?’
‘The Irish.’
‘Oh, the Irish. You can’t trust ’em.’ If one Englishman was worth ten Frenchmen, he was, in Sanders’s view, worth a hundred Irish. ‘Not but what I’d say that about Sir Mick.’
‘I would,’ she said.
WHEN she got back to The Duke’s after the wake, it was to find the preparations for the evening’s performance going ahead much as usual. She heard Murrough’s voice echoing down the corridor the moment she’d passed through the stage door and relief stopped her in her tracks for a moment before she became irritated. Still here after those hints of danger and threat of departure. Dramatizing everything like the actor he was. Making himself mysterious. What he called plotting was likely no more than grousing against the government in a Whitechapel alehouse with a lot of other micks.
I can’t be bothered with him.
Meeting Sir Boy Blanchard and Félicie on their way out did nothing to improve her mood.
‘There you are, missus. We’ll be back later. Keep our box for us, will you?’
She might have been the doorman. He was quick to see her displeasure and equally quick to try and dispel it.
‘That talented lad of yours . . . Jacques, is it? . . . He’s been showing us the mysteries that lie beneath the stage. At least, he’s been showing me; Lady Ffoulkes does not care to have her illusions disillusioned, do you Félicie?’
‘C’est de la magie pour moi.’
‘Et pour moi, tu es comme par magie.’
The words were beyond her but not the meeting of eyes as they were said. ‘And how is Lady Blanchard?’ Makepeace asked, innocently. She saw no reason not to remind the two of them that Sir Boy had a wife and Félicie a husband.
‘Well,’ Blanchard waved his hand, negligently, ‘she’s well, I thank ee.’
She watched them go out into the street. God forbid that in causing Andrew Ffoulkes’s absence she had been the instrument that also upset his marriage.
She put out her hand and grabbed the collar of a figure trying to whisk past her. ‘Back.’
Luchet pointed after the couple. ‘They have invite me to their club ...’
‘I’m not paying you to go to clubs. Back.’
From the Green Room came the voice of Ninon practicing her scales, there was chatter in the dressing rooms, the dancers on stage were limbering up to a tune from de Barigoule’s violin. For once, the sounds of the little world she had created failed to move her.
I’m tired, she thought, and went down to the auditorium to give hell to the lamplighters for having bungled the snuffing of the chandelier after yesterday’s interval.
When they got home that night, Hildy took her to one side as the others set about the supper that was always ready for them. ‘Jenny wants a private word.’
‘Now?’ Her daughter was usually in bed by this time.
‘However late, she said. Eh, you look thrawn, pet. Eat first.’
But Makepeace went up immediately. Jenny had not attended the theater since the first night and, because Sanders fetched the girl from her Abolition Society work in Clapham in the early evening, the only time mother and daughter had spent together this past week had been on the journeys to Town, when discussion remained general; these last few days Makepeace had spent most of the ride nodding off to sleep.
‘Come in, Mama. Please sit down.’ It was peremptory. She’s nervous, Makepeace thought, she’s been rehearsing whatever it is.
‘Mama, I am sorry I did not come to Uncle John’s funeral. I intended to but circumstances prevented it. However, I am sure he would have approved of the work I am doing for the Society and would understand the need for it to remain uninterrupted at this time. The debate is very soon, you know.’
She is nervous. ‘He’d understand. What circumstances?’
This wasn’t in the script and Jenny brushed it aside. ‘Mama, Miss Thornton has invited me to stay with her and her family in Clapham for a while. Hers is a most respectable household and it would be convenient for me not to have to travel back and forth. I should like your permission to accept.’
Makepeace said, ‘Of course you can go if you want to. What’s the matter, Jen?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, there is.’
‘Nothing, Mama. I shall go tomorrow, then.’
Dammit, was everybody in a conspiracy to perplex her? ‘Tell me.’
‘I have nothing more to say, Mama. Except . . .’ A flush began on Jenny’s neck and rose upwards; she was a helpless blusher. ‘. . . Mr Heilbron has asked if he may call on you soon.’
‘Why’s everybody asking my permission all of a sudden?’ Makepeace sat up; the blush had deepened. ‘He’s dropping Philippa and switching to you, is that it?’
‘Oh, oh, oh.’ Jenny’s fists hammered the air, then, with a self-control her mother hadn’t suspected in her, she lowered them to her lap, stood up and went to the door, opening it. ‘You are a crude woman, Mama. I bid you good night.’
Makepeace went down to the kitchen in a temper. ‘It’s that bloody Heilbron,’ she said, ‘He’s taking out a monopoly on my daughters.’
Hildy was putting dishes away. ‘It’s more nor that.’
‘What is it then?’
‘She was gannen along the landin’ in the dawn. She spied Sir Mick comin’ out of your room.’
‘Oh, God.’
Hildy nodded. She wiped the table and spread the cloth over the stove chimney to dry. ‘I’m for bed. I’ll lock up, eh?’ On the way out, she paused to stroke Makepeace’s cheek. ‘Don’t you mind, pet. Sanders and me don’t.’
Makepeace stood for a while then, suddenly cold, kicked the kitchen chair near the still-warm stove and sat in it. So Hildy and Sanders gave their permission to her carryings-on, did they? Damn their eyes, she didn’t need anyone’s permission, not Jenny’s, not Heilbron’s, not anybody’s.
I’m fifty years old, in the name of God. I pay my taxes, most of them, what in hell does it matter . . . we’re adults, not attached to anyone else—at least, I don’t think he is. We ain’t doing it
in public; I’m not running a bawdy house here. How come it’s connubial bliss if a bastard like Reverend Deedes says a few words over it and black sin if he don’t? At our age, who cares? Why should I be shamed? Who are we bothering?
They were bothering Jenny, they were bothering moral society and, she supposed, God himself. She could outface society, she could even outface God. But Jenny . . .
Her daughter’s disdain had struck to the depths of Makepeace’s soul and stirred up the sediment that had been laid down by a New England upbringing. The insubordinate years since then had not shifted its Puritanism nor washed out the strictures of Goody Busgutt and the hellfire promised to those sexual sinners that righteous old busybody had dragged to the meeting house for condemnation.
I’m bothering me. If it was hypocrisy, and she suspected it was, she was steeped in it, had rolled in it even as they’d made love, transferring much of her guilt to him, blaming him for her own moral slackness.
Yet even if he asked her to marry him, which he wouldn’t, probably couldn’t, she’d refuse. Marriage to anybody, especially him, was not on her cards; she was too old for another husband. Murrough had been what she wanted—a comrade by day, physical pleasure by night. No dependence on either side.
It had been—a guffaw was forced from her—fun.
But it was over.
Sighing, she stood up, put the chair back in its place and went to bed—locking the door to her room before she did so.
HE went four days later. Disappeared. Like a stage trick. As if whisked from sight by one of Jacques’s traps. He was in the coach with Makepeace and the others when they went to the theater that day, read a note that awaited him at the stage door, performed, took his curtain calls—and was gone.
It turned out that the only people he said good-bye to were Aaron and Sanders. ‘He thanked me very nice,’ Sanders said, ‘and I was to thank Hildy and everybody as looked after him, very generous he was.’
‘How good of him,’ Makepeace said.
Aaron said, ‘He only had time for a brief word. He said if you’ve got to leave a party, the best thing was to . . . well, fuck off.’
‘Did he.’
‘Look at it from his point of view. He was in a hurry. If he’d made his farewells to everybody in the theater he’d have been here all night.’
‘Very true.’
Her anger was deadly and she clung on to it so that pain wouldn’t take its place. No matter he’d told her it might happen, he could have told her that it had. A passing thank-you-for-having-me would have been nice.
She blocked her mind against the possibility that he had indeed gone to France. He’d become bored with her, he’d found another woman, returned to Ireland, emigrated to America—any of those alternatives were preferable than that he had been sucked into the black vacuum into which Philippa and Ffoulkes had disappeared. With an effort of will, she told herself they were also more likely.
After all, from the first he’d tried to make himself a man of mystery, suggesting he was in danger, pursued. What had happened? Nothing. And that, despite the fact for nearly two weeks he’d been the public’s darling. The only pursuit had been by newspapers and gossip pages. Which, she had to admit, he’d avoided except in his persona as Oroonoko with his features concealed by burnt cork.
But no, the man was unreliable, like his race; an overweight will o’the wisp. Doubtless he would materialize somewhere else and inveigle himself into another woman’s home and bed. Well, good luck to her.
She had enough to do; the theater had gone into mourning for him, cast and staff drooping with despair as if their professional life was over. To make sure it wasn’t, she had persuade those who’d booked to see Oroonoko played by Michael Murrough that they would enjoy it as much played by Aaron Burke. Posters had to be pasted over, programs changed, his costume altered, a rehearsal called.
That night Dizzy made an apology and a promise before he began the prologue. Sir Michael Murrough had been called away—there was a groan from the packed house—his role would be taken by the world famous actor Mr Burke; they would not be disappointed.
To Makepeace’s surprise they were not. Most of the stalwarts who had come every night only to watch Murrough—and they were quite a few—walked out at once but those for whom the production was new gave its ending the same accolade of a minute’s silence before they stood to cheer.
It was the staging Murrough had given the play that made it foolproof, she realized. Aaron was good—his sister was astonished by how expert an actor he had become, though it was skill rather than genius, lending Oroonoko more pathos and desperation than grandeur. But the effects Murrough had devised with Jacques were unaffected by his departure and the cast regained confidence as the audience responded to them. Above all, the quiet, sustained theme of the slave and her child with its last, heartbreaking chord brought down the final curtain on an experience that extended drama into reality.
In the interval, Blanchard had paid her the compliment of inviting her into his box for champagne and sympathy. ‘We thought you were done, missus, did we not, Félicie. No Sir Mick, no play, we thought. We should have known you would triumph.’
It was not unpleasant and she allowed herself to be thawed. The question he always asked: ‘Any news of . . . ?’ suggested comradeship in adversity, an alliance of concern for the missing—until the interrogation became more insistent. ‘What can Sir Mick be about? Did that bad fellow tell you nothing of his intentions?’
As always Sir Boy’s straight, beautiful nose seemed to sniff out what others wished to conceal. She wondered if Murrough had told someone in the cast he intended to go to France and, if so, whether the someone had told Blanchard. The man’s interest made her uneasy because it gave validity to her fear, so she refused more champagne and left.
For a while, vexation kept her weariness and anxiety at bay; she was always better angry. Steeling herself to meet Stephen in an upstairs room of Benthall’s Coffee House just round the corner from The Duke’s, she swept up the stairs in a fury that he had asked her to come to him rather than attend on her.
He disarmed her immediately. ‘Knowing how busy you are I would not delay you at Reach House but hoped this place would meet with your convenience.’
‘You could have come to the theater,’ she snapped, knowing he would never set foot in it.
He merely smiled. ‘In any case, I wished to introduce you to my new establishment. At the moment it runs at a loss but I have the backing of the Society for the Suppression of Vice and hopes of persuading the prime minister to reduce the tax on coffee. Did you notice the clientele downstairs?’
She hadn’t.
‘Artisans,’ he said, ‘Drinking coffee rather than their usual pint of purl and gin. Shops like these shall be a weapon in our armory against the prevailing evil of drunkenness.’
She was grudging. ‘It’ll need more than a cup of coffee.’ London life had shocked her; her time in the harborage of Chelsea had led her to forget the degradation that existed side by side with the capital’s wonders. If anything, it was worse than she remembered; the East End public houses spewed out reeling teetotums of men and women who in turn spewed their drink onto the road and passersby. She’d had to go to the magistrates to report the noise and the nuisance of ‘The Bunch of Grapes’ next door where a high level of drunkenness was maintained by a local employer who gave part of his weavers’ wages to its landlord to pay them in drink. Nothing had been done.
She realized she was being mollified. ‘What do you want, Stephen?’
She knew what it was: He wanted to marry Jenny. Or, as he now put it in the course of a long and charming speech: ‘To pay my addresses to your younger daughter.’
And although she knew that Philippa would not mind being passed over, indeed might actually rejoice in being freed from a promise she should never have made, Makepeace was so angry on her behalf that she didn’t make it easy for him.
‘Dear, dear,’ she said, nastily, ‘How
can that be? You’re hand-fasted to my elder daughter.’
‘No, missus,’ he said gently. ‘Philippa has rejected me. You and I both know, and so does Philippa, that going to France was her way of ending the engagement.’
It was true; Makepeace was aware it was true, but she was still aggressive. ‘Her way of trying to save a friend and decent man from the guillotine.’
‘The Marquis de Condorcet, yes,’ he said. ‘We discussed him, she and I. I told her I was prepared to see her help him by sending him the necessary papers to leave France but she knew that any deeper involvement could not be tolerated. The man is an atheist.’
‘Oh, well, deserves to have his head cut off, then,’ Makepeace said.
‘Missus, missus.’ He refused to be provoked. ‘We will not argue over atheism. But, don’t you see, Philippa’s action has proved she would find me no more suitable as a husband than I would find her as a wife.’
Why did he always have to be so reasonable? Philippa—and it had surprised her mother as much as anyone else—was a chip off the old block; as headstrong as Makepeace had ever been, as freedom-loving. And this man could not endure that in the female, certainly not in a wife. Freedom for slaves, yes. Freedom for women?
Stephen Heilbron, whom the world regarded as a libertarian, hated by slave-owners as a revolutionary, was as rigid in convention as any Puritan. He was not for Philippa, nor she for him.
‘Is Jenny going to accept you?’ she asked.
‘I believe so. She is devoted to my cause and, I like to think, to myself. She has indicated as much.’
Oh, Jenny. Which cause will your life with him be devoted to? The Society for the Abolition of Slavery or his Society for the Suppression of Vice?
Makepeace could hear the bars being cemented into place. Heilbron and his ilk had shut down Philippa’s Society for Whatever Rights she’d wanted for women. They would have shut down The Duke’s if they could—and, one day, probably would. What came next? A Society for the Suppression of Actresses? The Society for the Suppression of women like me? The gates were slamming on feminine freedom. Jenny and her generation were being persuaded to close them on their own imprisonment.