Foolscap

by Michael Malone

  “Yes? Yes?” The retired scholar’s voice was piercing, and filled with swoops of tremulous warbles. “Of course it’s you, Mr. Ryan. At the station, then, are you? Walk out the gate, you see it there? Turn left. No, my error, turn right, up the High…oh. You’re in London? Ah, not here at all then? Terribly sorry, I took your note—too kind—to mean you were coming straight on. Misinterpretation of the text, ha ha! Nonsense, my fault entirely. Tomorrow then. Come along. Good-bye. Pardon? Oh dear, expect he’s rung off.” And the phone clanked dead. Theo returned down the hall grinning; so much so, that the young American woman clutching her robe as she made a nervous sprint from the bath to her room took fright and broke into a trot.

  Early in the morning, he made his way to Bedford Square, where a Georgian facade veiled the fin-de-siècle Hungarian opulence of Middendorf, Ltd. He was determined either to learn news of Ford or, leaving the city without it, go on himself to Cornwall after visiting Miss Throckmorton. He arrived at the agency just in time to help the receptionist, the Irish Miss Fitzhugh, push her bicycle up the steps and into the foyer. Theo had been on the premises so often that Miss Fitzhugh—a slender twenty-year-old with delicate fair skin and a tremendous quantity of eye makeup—was his oldest acquaintance in the city. And by now she’d warmed to him enough to take a flirtatiously caustic tone quite different even in accent from the stiff formality with which she answered the telephone.

  “Hello, love,” she waved. “Another grand and gorgeous day! Still not back yet from holiday, Mr. Middendorf, and no, I don’t know when.” She announced this as soon as Theo had stooped under the low door lintel and followed her into a fussily opulent waiting chamber dense with pink satin balloon curtains, peacock-bordered wallpaper, gilded chairs, and velvet ottomans. She added, “And I’m to tell you straight away, Mr. Ryan, if you won’t be turning over this play script that belongs to Mr. Rexford—”

  “Ah then, is it threats from himself now, Miss Fitzhugh?” Theo—unconsciously at first, and then increasingly for fun—had fallen into the habit of mimicking (or attempting to mimic—for he was quite inconsistent) the receptionist’s Sligo brogue. “Well, then, Miss Fitzhugh, what? Gangland beatings? The Old Bailey?”

  “Well, then…” She shrugged, apparently not having received instructions as to specific retaliations. “Well, you must then, that’s all, isn’t it?” She pushed up the sleeves of her thin red cardigan, exposing arms as white as the three large peonies in the amber glass vase beside her.

  Theo leaned over the edge of her desk; it had a Japanese look, black lacquered, with curved legs. He grinned at her. “‘Well then,’ you’re to tell Buzzy from me, before I’ll do that, I’ll eat every damned page of it first!” He scowled horribly. “Or I’ll burn it.”

  “You’d never. Get on.” In fact, Miss Fitzhugh preferred to think that he might; that Ryan’s peculiar accent might mean he was one of those big-boned Scottish hotheads quite capable of stuffing an entire play script in his mouth and chewing it up. The notion appealed to her; frankly, she was bored by her job. She’d thought it’d be a lark to work for a theatrical agent, that she’d meet stars like Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson, but most of Mr. Middendorf’s clients were old men in their forties, or worse. Or they were brainy sorts, stuck on themselves far more than on her, and (to judge from their conversation) much more interested in money than art. Where was their money?— that was just about all they ever said. Theo Ryan was young, good-looking, and treated her like a person. She smiled at him.

  Theo, fairly certain by now that Buzzy Middendorf, unless ornately devious, really didn’t know where the playwright was, smiled back. “You don’t have even a phone number for Ford? I’ll bet you do.”

  Miss Fitzhugh offered the mollification of a bigger smile. “My, and you’ve a head hard as rocks. Mr. Middendorf now, he says you’re getting to be ‘the bone of his existence.’” (The old theatrical agent, a native of Budapest, was famous for his cavalier contortions of English idioms, a trait which his young receptionist found as amusing as all British Islanders find anyone’s inability to speak their language as well as they do.)

  Theo rubbed at his sunburned nose. “Listen. He told me on the phone I was a ‘thorn around his neck.’”

  “Oh, that’s a new one.” She laughed.

  “Were you here when Ford came by in May? When he first got to England?”

  “Oh, ay,” she nodded, crossing her arms over her breasts as if to protect them in memory. “Just the once. Talked a streak, he did. I’ll say this much for him, sounds a grand genius, doesn’t he now, Mr. Rexford does. And I’ve met plenty since coming here, don’t.”

  “Plenty of geniuses?”

  “It’s them that says it.” She wheeled sideways and answered the phone with pleasant indifference.

  Theo prodded when she finished, “Ford talked a streak, and…?”

  “Had himself a bit of a nap, there on the sofa.” She pointed at a soft Turkish-looking settee in a corner.

  “Drunk?”

  She tried not to smile, but failed. “Could be he’d had a pint.”

  “Could be he’d had a gallon.” Theo flicked a rose-tinted crystal dangling from a Tiffany lamp shade. “Did he bring someone named Jenny Harte along? Blonde, American?”

  Miss Fitzhugh shook her pencil at him. “Aren’t you the nosy parker?”

  Theo tried pulling rank. “I’m his official biographer. I know more about that man than he does himself.”

  It didn’t work. “Except where he is,” she said smugly.

  Sinking on the settee, Theo sighed. “He may not know that either. Sometimes he doesn’t.”

  Phones were ringing more often now; packages arrived by messengers with their trouser legs strapped for biking. Theo sat a while watching Middendorf employees whisk in and out of the many doors that led to the waiting chamber. Most of the secretarial staff, like Miss Fitzhugh, were young, very attractive women.

  Finally, he pushed himself up from the heap of soft cushions. “Miss Fitzhugh, have lunch with me?” He held out his hands. “A lonely stranger in a foreign land? Fellow Irishman?”

  She looked at him, surprised into a blush that rose from her neck to her faintly freckled cheeks. “Well, I would really like that,” she said. “But see, my bloke?—we’re getting married—he comes round on his motorbike when I’m done here noontimes, and so we’re going out for a spot of something together. Come along with us?”

  “No, it’s you or nothing. I’m off then,” Theo said. “Don’t miss me too much.”

  “Ah, I’ll try my hardest. Back to the States?” She was disappointed.

  “No, to Cornwall. How big is Cornwall?”

  “Never been. Only been here to London and home.”

  “I’ve got to get my play back, dammit!” Theo took down and angrily shook the signed photograph of Rexford (“Buzzy, Yours in debt, Ford”); it hung on the wall between photos of Noel Coward (“Mon petit Buzzzzz. Toujours, Noel”) and T.S. Eliot (“To Josef, Regards, Tom”). Theo yelled at Ford’s face, which was smirking at him in a maddening way. “I’ve come three thousand miles, you bastard!”

  Stirred by the tall man’s turmoil (which she attributed to blighted passion for this American blonde, Jenny Harte), Miss Fitzhugh made a sudden decision. Spinning about in her swivel chair, she took a flat package out of the file cabinet behind her. “Look here, Mr. Ryan. Don’t you be telling a soul, but this just came for him. Have a look inside. Could be it’ll give you a hint—like where he’s got off to.”

  Theo was around the desk beside her by the time she had tentatively slid a letter opener under the seal of the manila envelope. He could now see that it was addressed to Ford Rexford at the Middendorf agency. His heart spasmed so fast he had to squeeze his eyes shut. When he opened them, he was still looking at what he’d thought he had seen the receptionist riffling through: the wrinkled copy of Foolscap.

  “
Damn! That’s my play!”

  “Your play?” Miss Fitzhugh looked skeptical. There was no author listed on the cover page, nor in fact any title other than “historical play.” There was only a clerk’s notation: “Return to Ford Rexford, c/o Middendorf.” She tightened her grip on the packet.

  “Yes, mine!” Theo slapped his hand hard on her lacquered desktop. “What do you think I’ve been in here bugging you about for weeks! Didn’t I just say I wanted my play back? Look. Open it! The first line. Isn’t the character’s name Raleigh? Doesn’t it say, ‘No need for hoarding now. I can be prodigal. As I was meant to be. Light!’”

  Miss Fitzhugh flipped to the page. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “Nothing like.”

  “It doesn’t?” He grabbed at the manuscript. “The bastard’s changed it then. What did he—” But Theo stopped. Clipped to the cover was a note under the engraved letterhead of a firm of eminent London producers. Its message turned his face as red as the receptionist’s sweater:

  Ford dear fellow.

  Where are you, rogue? Buzzy claims not to have a clue. Lying? And why didn’t you see me, when you dropped this thing off?

  RE which: Many thanks, but must decline. Your young friend may have talent, but given the subject matter, I’ll pass. He’s in over his head. Our history, after all. Why so many of you Americans want to muck about in it is a puzzlement. Really, you should discourage him—put that positively—En-courage him to stick to his own cabbage patch. As you do! Caught Her Pride of Place again Tuesday last. Sublime. Anything in the works for me?

  W.F.D.

  P.S. Sorry to let you down. You simply can’t write plays like this anymore. Not in the twentieth century. As our beloved Buzzy would say, That’s it in an eggshell.

  “Give that back, Mr. Ryan!” Miss Fitzhugh and Theo engaged in a silent tug-of-war across the desk. “It’s not addressed to you a’tall, now is it!”

  “It’s me he’s talking about!” Theo hissed at her with such ferocity that she let go of the manuscript. His arm flung out and knocked over the Venetian glass vase, spilling water and peonies on piles of mail.

  “Oh Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!” snarled Miss Fitzhugh as she snatched papers out of the water’s path. “Well, don’t be standing there!” she commanded in a sudden display of temper.

  “All right, I won’t.” Theo turned briskly. “Sorry. Good-bye, Miss Fitzhugh.” And, despite her shouts to return, he walked out the door of the glimmery gilt chamber with his play and his letter of rejection tucked under his arm.

  Three hours later, he was on a train to Devonshire.

  Chapter 21

  Enter a Soothsayer

  God, who is the author of all our tragedies, hath written out for us and appointed us all the parts we are to play.

  —Sir Walter Raleigh

  How drab and monotonous were American trains compared to this railway car with its wood-framed compartments and cozy facing seats of worn plush. How empty would look American highways after this array of villages and forests, towers and castles and abbeys, parading past Theo’s window without pause. Nature here had grown more civilized, civilization more natural than at home; there was none of the raw juxtaposition of wild mountains and concrete shopping strips; time had smoothed the edges; the scale could be comprehended. Blue Guide in hand, crouched near the compartment’s lowered glass, Theo followed his progress toward Devon. High over gold-grained plains, like a needle lancing the clouds, he saw the soft yellow limestone spire of Salisbury Cathedral, and later the medieval town of Shaftesbury, and then the great houses near Yeovil in Sir Walter Raleigh country. There he changed to the local train that would finally bring him to Barnet-on-Urswick and Dame Winifred Throckmorton.

  Theo felt grateful to the South-West Counties for distracting him from the barbs of quotes that bored into his thoughts. “In over his head. Our history, after all,” the insufferable “W.F.D.” had said. Well, Mr. W.F.D., was ancient Egypt Shakespeare’s history? Had Marlowe grown up among the pampered Jades of Asia? Theo snarled, vowing revenge.

  On the other hand, these West End producers might know their business; he shouldn’t dismiss their response out of hand. Or dammit, why shouldn’t he? Hadn’t Ford said Scottie Smith was wrong, when Broadway and the West End both idolized Scottie Smith! “Encourage him to stick to his own cabbage patch.” Right! Were those producers sticking to theirs when they mounted Rexford plays set in rural Texas? “You simply can’t write plays like this in the twentieth century.” Oh, you could write them. But could you get them produced? God knows if it were a real Renaissance play they’d go crazy over it.

  “In over his head!”

  “Beg your pardon?” asked a portly gentleman, peering across at Theo around his folded Times. “Overhead? Yes, my case up there in the rack. Not disturbing you?”

  Theo blushed. “No, I’m sorry, just thinking aloud.”

  “From the States, are you?”

  Theo admitted it.

  “Yes, well, we let you get away with that one.” The portly man grinned, big square teeth under a bristly mustache.

  Theo chuckled at what he took to be a joke about England’s loss of the Revolutionary War, and, satisfied, the man disappeared again behind his newspaper.

  No, thought the young American as he watched a flock of sheep harried across a road by two small relentless dogs; no, he wasn’t in over his head. At least he wasn’t in over Ford’s head. Foolscap, reread amid the clamor of Waterloo Station, was not as he remembered it. It was better. It wasn’t that there were a huge number of changes from the draft Theo had seen tossed into the gold Lincoln back in Rome, but that each change rippled out into every part of the play—as when, after patient jiggling with strings of tiny electric bulbs, a Christmas tree suddenly lights up. He couldn’t be angry. No, he was angry; but he was also impressed—and not just by how good Ford was, but how good he’d been shown to be himself. Didn’t the people in this play now have the right to human voices?

  But what about Ford? Should he pursue him to Cornwall even though he now had in his possession the play, the thing he was ostensibly pursuing Ford for? And if he found him, what then? Oh, Theo had long imagined their meeting. He saw it sometimes on a foggy moor, a black wind whipping furze and heather against their legs as he and Ford fought atop jagged granite outcrops. He saw it sometimes on a barren coast, spumes of gray waves crashing high against chalk cliffs; and at the end of a narrow stone causeway that jutted into the sea—Rhodora standing watching them, her long black hair flying wild around her, while on the beach, he and Ford slugged each other until Ford fell senseless in the foaming surf and had to be dragged out by his shirt. (It was always the same red-checked Pendleton shirt Ford had been wearing the day he and the playwright had met on Rhodora’s Mountain.) At times, he’d make it Jenny Harte on the causeway, storm-swept and rain-drenched at the end of the jetty.

  And occasionally, when the woman turned back from the sea, her face proved to be that of Maude Fletcher. This intrusion into the drama of revenge was disconcerting, since—while Ford’s treachery against Rhodora, Jenny, and Theo himself was undeniable—he really had done nothing much to Maude except skip a few of her spiritual counseling sessions. It wasn’t Ford’s fault that Maude had preferred Herbie Crawford to Theo Ryan.

  Well, then, it wasn’t Theo’s fault that Ford had run off with Jenny Harte, was it? Nor his business. What could he say, really, if they met? “Ford, here’s a message from Rhodora,” followed by a sock to the gut? Oh, he could tell Jenny: “Jenny, come home and finish your dissertation,” but his advice was unlikely to be heeded. What would really happen? Theo imagined Ford leaning out of the half-door of a white stone cottage, resting his elbows on the sill. The door was painted bright blue, and inside the cottage a vase of blue flowers sat on a white mantel. He saw Ford (still in the wool checked shirt) slap his hands together and yell, “Theo! Jesus Fucking Christ! What are you
doing here? I’m glad to see you, big guy! Jenny, look who’s here!”

  So then, what’s your response? thought Theo, knocking his fist so emphatically into his knee that his traveling companion gave him a troubled glance. “Ford, what I’m doing here is to tell you you’ve really pissed me off and let me down, you’ve made Rhodora miserable, and you’ll probably do the same to Jenny. You’re a coward and a shit. That’s what I’m here to tell you. So here’s your play back; I hope you find an ending. And by the way, thanks for fixing up mine, and thanks for sending it to that producer. He didn’t like it.”

  And he heard Ford say, “He didn’t? Well, fuck him. He’s wrong. Probably didn’t read it anyhow.”

  Theo sighed aloud. This time the portly gentleman lowered his Times entirely. Theo excused himself and went out to stroll the corridor.

  The train moved slowly through Dorset into the sun and Devonshire. Deep green uplands unrolled behind yellow fields and clusters of stone farmhouses. In High Piddleminster, the man with the Times bid Theo good-bye. Then came Combe St. Mary. And then, at 5:07—precisely as promised by the timetable—a conductor passing by rapped on the glass of his compartment. “Here you are,” he said, pointing. And there was Barnet-on-Urswick.