by David Taylor
As a writer he had studied the pestilence, seeking inspiration in the sudden mortality of men. He had stood in the shadows watching the iron wheels of the dead-cart striking sparks from the cobbled lane as the corpse-gatherers made their gruesome rounds. He had seen the bodies tossed into the tumbrels, God’s terrible gleaning bound for the burial pits outside the city walls, and the doors daubed with red paint. Lord have mercy upon us! Should he be spared, he would explore this recurring nightmare in one of his plays.
What might be said of this budding dramatist in his twenty-eighth year? Will was neither tall nor graceful. His hair was already thinning from the brow and what was left was an indeterminable shade of brown. But his dark gypsy eyes were far from nondescript and his sensitive hands deft enough to fashion a goose quill in a matter of seconds. Unlike the rest of his family he could read and write. Not that any two sentences looked alike as he chopped and changed as he went along. What was constant, however, was the fluidity and rhythm of his writing and the imagery he could conjure up. Lacking a formal education, he possessed a genius for words.
Scribbling away in the Rose’s tiring house, Will thought about his future. Theatres were unsavoury places, where groundlings got their pockets picked and their cocks sucked before the first interval, but it wouldn’t always be like this. Already the cheapest and most popular form of entertainment, the stage was a cockpit for conflicting ideas and those at court wanted to possess the power that lay in the playwright’s pen. As a shopkeeper’s son, he would doff his cap to the aristocracy in the sixpenny seats if they paid him for it.
Food prices had almost doubled since he came to London. You couldn’t purchase a loaf of bread for less than four pence or a plump goose for under a shilling. The cost of accommodation was also soaring. Half his earnings went on rent. Sitting in his garret one night he had drawn up a balance sheet and accepted its baleful logic. On Henslowe’s rates of pay, three plays a year would buy him a pair of stout leather boots, a linen shirt and a new jerkin with nothing left for the finer things in life like a ten shilling prostitute at Black Luce’s or even a bottle of decent French wine.
There was no escaping it: the only way to change his stars was by seeking patronage and he had a target in mind – Henry Wriothesley, the young Earl of Southampton, a wealthy theatre-loving bisexual Catholic and a close friend of England’s rising star, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who had inherited his stepfather Leicester’s position at court and also the tax revenue from his sweet wines monopoly. He had been told Essex was looking for a stage writer by no less a person than the earl’s campaign manager. Francis Bacon was quite open about Essex’s political motives. “The theatre is the most accessible form of entertainment in the city. My Lord wants to converse with the people of London, to win them over to his cause. You could help him do that.”
When Will asked whether Essex wanted plays to mirror his political philosophy, Bacon talked about state control of the stage and how drama had been made to work to the royal advantage. “What is sauce for the goose can also be sauce for the gander, Master Shakespeare.”
The rumour was that the two young earls would be occupying the stage chairs when Will’s Henry VI was next performed. To earn their favour, which might run to a dedication fee or even a small annuity, Will was adding a new scene to his history play, a tear-jerking death for the valiant warrior, Lord Talbot, designed to appeal to noblemen yearning nostalgically for the code of chivalry. According to Bacon, Essex planned to use the theatre to whip up patriotic fervour and to expose cowardly self-serving courtiers. Well, he could help there too, by describing how the heroic Talbot was left to die outside Bordeaux because England’s leading nobles refused to reinforce his army and how this had led to the loss of our French territories and to civil war.
“Talbot’s farewell will be grist to their mill,” he told an impassive props basket. “My lord of Essex sees himself as England’s Achilles.”
A loud crashing noise came between Will and his propaganda. The Heavens had fallen in – quite literally. The stagehands couldn’t get the hang of the new-fangled pulley system and the false ceiling had collapsed. Carpenters rushed to repair the damage.
It was mid morning and the dress rehearsal was nothing short of a disaster. Lord Strange’s Men were due to perform Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta in a few hours time and all they had got through so far was the prologue, delivered in ringing tones by Will before disappearing into the wings to get on with his writing. The Elizabethan theatre was a hard grind: morning rehearsals, afternoon performances; fifteen shows a month, half of them new. The more plays Will could churn out, the better for everyone.
Sitting at a small desk, wedged between a curtain and a row of costumes, he had moved from Malta to the muddy fields of France. Holinshed’s Chronicles lay open on his knee as he imagined Lord Talbot’s son being blooded in battle. What if he talked about ‘the maidenhead of thy first fight,’ a startling metaphor, but was it apt or merely a reflection of his urgent desire to ravish black-eyed Bess Cowper. Not that she was a virgin, far from it.
Something else was nagging away at Will. It was high time he visited his family in Stratford. He hadn’t seen his children for more than a year. The twins, Hamnet and Judith, had just turned seven while his eldest daughter, Susanna, would soon be nine. It was his wife Anne he didn’t want to see. All they had ever had in common was a sexual desire that was now a thing of the past.
He remembered the wild look in Anne’s eye when he first unlaced her bodice in her father’s field. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” he had asked, trying out a line that took his fancy. “Nay, Will, I want your prick not your poesy,” she had replied, screaming loudly when she got her wish. “Faster sweeting, faster,” she moaned, as they rolled around in the winter barley. If this was the language of love it had a most urgent vocabulary.
Later, he had tried to explain metaphors to her. How you compared one thing to another to heighten emotional awareness. How ‘love’ was ‘spring’ and ‘death’ was ‘winter’ but Anne couldn’t see the point of such fancy talk. “By taking one thing and calling it another you are playing with words. One thing cannot be another. My breast is just a breast, not a golden globe or a maiden world unconquered.” There in the long grass, they stopped arguing. It had been a meeting of bodies, not of minds, and there had been unfortunate consequences.
He still had difficulty in thinking of Anne as his wife. They had married in a rush at her parish church in Temple Grafton, kneeling before the altar in linen caps designed to ward off demons. But the real demons had been in his head. Rightly or wrongly, he could never get rid of the feeling that she had trapped him into marrying her. He had only been eighteen while she was a knowing twenty-six.
Anne’s small dowry and his own lack of independent means had forced them to live with his parents and she was still there in Henley Street, nagging him for a place of her own. To make matters worse, she had come to share her brother’s faith. Calvinism was sweeping through Stratford like a forest fire and the council of burgesses and aldermen was already talking of banning all dramatic performances.
“Playwriting is the Devil’s work.” That’s what she had told him on his last visit. “Your name is hated here, husband.” “Maybe so,” he had replied, “but Puritan morality won’t last and my name will!”
First though, he must concentrate on the staging of Talbot’s fame. A few honeyed phrases might make his fortune. The words began to flow.
12 APRIL 2014
The woman in the picture is forty. She is looking directly at the camera but her head is tilted to reveal her best profile. The gaze is steady, the eyes serious but not yet sad. She seems to be waiting for something to happen in her grainy, black and white world. The photographer’s artfully placed lights emphasise the height of her cheekbones and the width of her mouth. Ten years had gone by since Dame Julia Walker-Roberts posed for the picture that appeared on the back cover of her award-winning book, By the Dim Light of Nature. Th
e book was still a classic and Blackwell’s continued to stock it for Oxford’s undergraduate intake.
Julia returned the hardback copy to the pine bookcase, keeping it as far away from the Book of the Month as possible. She didn’t want to share even the same shelf with Milton Cleaver’s latest work. Copies of Shakespeare without Question seemed to be everywhere. The best thing to be said for the ‘Shakespeare Criticism’ section was its proximity to the coffee shop and those tempting little pastries she really shouldn’t touch.
In search of an antidote for hunger, she wandered downstairs to ‘Modern Fiction’ and picked up a book of Martin Amis essays. She was soon laughing aloud. In reviewing Michael Crichton’s lame follow-up to Jurassic Park, Amis had written about the literary jungle. ‘Out there, beyond the foliage, you could see herds of clichés, roaming free.’ How very typical. She remembered an old don at Exeter College complaining about Amis’ flashy, meretricious prose and saying he should never have been awarded a Congratulatory First. Julia had disagreed. Martin had a truly original mind and there weren’t many of those around. Julia smiled one of those thin, cleverer-than-thou smiles her peers found so disconcerting.
Moving towards the ground floor entrance, she caught sight of a display table devoted to a Victorian sex guide and Melvin Bragg’s best-seller, The Adventure of English. She flicked through Bragg’s pages. The book’s intellectual firepower was obvious but she was suspicious of it. There was something about books based on television series that made her uncomfortable. Michael Wood’s In Search of Shakespeare had been particularly annoying, a soufflé of ideas suitable for peak-time viewing. Although never invited to be a TV presenter, Julia felt sure she would have turned down the opportunity. For all its administrative irritations and political backbiting the cloistered life of Oxford was infinitely preferable to the gutter of public recognition and commercial reward.
Leaving Blackwell’s shop she walked out into the bright sunlight. The Broad appeared to be full of tourists and bicycles. As a northern girl with a sheltered upbringing, Oxford had come as a surprise. Instead of dreaming spires she discovered a bustling, vibrant city that wore its history lightly. The university she had always loved. With its pervasive atmosphere of pure learning and untarnished scholarship, it had become her sanctuary; a magical place where her wish for harmony and organisation could be fully satisfied.
Julia checked her reflection in a shop window. She had opted for a black suit and white blouse and softened her hairstyle to make herself look younger. She knew Sebastian Christie would be waiting outside the Randolph Hotel and that, on catching sight of him, her stomach would churn.
Sure enough, he was standing under the glass and wrought iron awning as if uncertain of his whereabouts: the body less muscular, the fair hair thinner now. But the smile hadn’t changed.
“Julia,” he said, “you’re looking well.” That soft Irish lilt.
The memories flooded back. Sebastian of the gentle gaze and rough student sweaters; Sebastian the Brasenose athlete bending his back in the Isis boat; Sebastian the secret lover to be hidden in her college bed at night: Sebastian, thirty years later, bowing his head and smiling a seductive welcome. He was still the boy she had once loved, just older and sadder, diminished by life’s little defeats.
They had met again at a cocktail party. She had been surrounded by admirers praising her OUDS lecture on Shakespeare’s love poetry when she noticed him standing on his own, balancing a wine glass and plate in one hand and waving with the other. The shock immobilised her. He had said her name. They had left the party and gone for a drink in the Eagle and Child.
What hung between them was the weight of history, a recollection of their last parting. At twenty-one, she had been about to embark on postgraduate studies in Rome; he a year younger was facing up to finals. They had spoken of marriage but she had ended such hopes with a short, brutal letter to which there had been no reply: a mistake on her part and his too.
At Sebastian’s insistence Julia had updated her personal story over gin and tonics. As a single woman she had avoided intimacy. This single-mindedness brought material rewards: an Oxford chair in her early forties and the respect of her peers. What she didn’t mention was her emotional emptiness. How a pillar of the Oxford establishment could be so riddled with self-doubt. If she didn’t understand it, how could anyone else.
Sebastian had been more open about his failures. After Julia left him he had wallowed in misery. The upper second in Greats came as a bitter blow. Instead of bouncing back with a doctrinal thesis or some other display of intellectual resilience, he had settled for a lectureship at Queen’s University, Belfast, where, by his own admission, he had marked time. It was only on his return to England that his luck changed. One company followed another and all did well, particularly Much Ado Tours, which promised American tourists a memorable week of sightseeing and theatre in Shakespeare country. He was now wealthy but had no one on whom to spend his money.
And here they were, having afternoon tea at the Randolph Hotel, staring at one another over a tiered cake stand full of thinly cut sandwiches, scones and cupcakes, wondering what to say next.
“How is my professor today?” Sebastian asked.
“Very well, thank you. The Verona conference was quite demanding.”
“I can imagine.” He sounded listless and ill at ease.
“What you cannot imagine is being propositioned by a Serbian professor with bad breath seeking support for his theory that Hamlet was a woman.”
“Well, that’s a first at least,” said Sebastian with a grin.
“Actually, it’s not a new idea. A nineteenth-century scholar claimed that Hamlet’s mind was essentially feminine in nature and wrote a gender-bending book about it.”
“So what did your Serb do?”
“He put a sweaty paw on my bottom and promised to teach me to hear the play with new ears. I told him there was no part of my body in need of his attention and would he kindly unhand me.”
“Mind you,” she said, biting into a strawberry tartlet, “that wasn’t the only strange thing. An antique bookseller from Sussex came to my hotel asking me to authenticate a Francis Bacon letter. Curious cove – Major Duncan, I mean, not Bacon – could have been an actor.”
“Small world,” Sebastian replied. “I ran into a Major Duncan at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. He was typically ex-Army, a self-important man with a clipped manner and a moustache to match.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “My man was tall and florid, probably quite good-looking in his youth, and with a very rounded turn of phrase.”
“Different chap altogether. The Major Duncan I met had a bookshop in Hove.”
“The man I saw gave me a business card but wanted me to write to his home. I thought there was something odd about his address. A marina in Shoreham is hardly bookselling territory. And I fell for it. I’ve authenticated the letter in writing.”
A dreadful thought entered her head. “My God,” she moaned, “he’s going to use my name to advance some half-baked theory about Bacon writing Shakespeare’s plays.”
Sebastian patted her hand. “Calm down, Julia. You are over-reacting. All you’ve done is to examine a Francis Bacon letter. Presumably it was genuine?”
“Oh yes, the letter was genuine but it contained some kind of cipher and goodness knows what that might reveal. This fake major is plotting something, I feel it in my bones, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’m in the running to be the next Warden of Warbeck College but there’s stiff competition and the smallest whiff of scandal will be enough to ruin my chances.”
“This is what we are going to do,” he said, reaching across the table to take her hand. “Hire an investigator to find this bogus bookseller, discover what his game is and keep you out of it.”
“You’ll do this for me,” she said.
“Of course I will.”
“Then so be it.” Julia began to relax. A weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Had
she known the consequences, her joy would have been short-lived.
14 APRIL 2014
He enjoyed shaving. It was a satisfying ritual that hadn’t changed much since his days on the West End stage. Applied with a badger brush, the lather from the Truefitt & Hill shaving cream softened and moistened the skin letting the triple-bladed razor glide over the greying stubble on his chin. A sprinkling of lavender water and a quick look in the mirror completed this well-rehearsed manoeuvre. The face gazing back at him was the one Dame Julia Walker-Roberts had seen in Verona but without the moustache, the neatly parted hair or the walking stick.
How he had loved impersonating the short-changing book dealer from Hove. But the time for pretence was over. Major Duncan and Bard-lite were back in the prop basket. He would greet his guests as Donald Strachan, a silver-haired man in an open-necked shirt and khaki shorts who had once been a famous actor and was now marooned on a rusty Shoreham houseboat.
He went out onto the deck to sniff the salty, sea-scented early morning air and salute the flag. Where had that woman got to? He couldn’t have her wandering off when there was so much work to be done. Then he remembered. She was collecting the mail. With a guilty start he snatched a pair of binoculars off the upper deck seating and began to search for her.
By now, dark grey clouds were gathering overhead, heavy with intention, but even in the mounting gloom he could pick out his partner sashaying out of the leisure centre on her high heels. Even in a plastic mackintosh and approaching forty, Antonia Alvarez was a stunning sight. Training his glasses on her, he saw she was studying a cream coloured envelope. Oh, my God, he thought, she’s got Dame Julia’s letter and is wondering why it’s postmarked Oxford. She’s thinking he doesn’t know any Oxford women but, then again, he hadn’t known that gardener from the Royal Horticultural Society until she caught them in the flower beds. Bollocks, she’s bound to think the worst. Why didn’t I collect the bloody post myself?