Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

Walpole looked him in the eye with a sort of compassion. Everyone in this hot, crammed building knew Derby's position; sometimes he felt his heart was being sliced open for public exhibition under the white lights.

  In Act Three came one of Derby's favourite scenes, in which the Teazles behaved very sweetly to each other, and then fell into a quarrel about who had begun their previous quarrel and ended by demanding a divorce. But some of the sharpest dialogue was spoiled by the yowl of a fellow in the pit, when one of the chandeliers spilt hot wax into his collar. Had Derby a less famous face, he would sometimes have liked to go incognita and sit on a bench in the pit, as Sir Harry Englefield was boasting of doing the other day. That way he'd be able to catch his beloved's every subtle intonation and expression.

  'Isn't the volume of chit-chat shocking?' said Mrs Damer, in the interval.

  'Mm,' Walpole agreed, 'poor King's quite drowned out at times.'

  'My friend Bunbury once quipped,' said Derby, 'that he preferred the theatre to the opera, because there they sing so loud that one can't hear oneself talk.'

  The cousins laughed. Below, there was a surge of bodies into the auditorium, which meant that the unsold tickets had been knocked down for half price. 'Now, you youngsters won't remember this,' said Walpole, 'but back in '63 Garrick tried to abolish half-price tickets; he thought it was an insult to the play to come in for the last two acts only. Well, my dears, the crowd ran amok. Tore up the benches, ripped the fronts off our boxes, smashed the harpsichord...'

  'What an appalling scene,' said Mrs Damer, her eyes shining.

  'Sheridan always says never trust an audience,' Derby put in. 'They'll clap politely for nine years and then riot like lunatics in the tenth.'

  When the curtain rose again Derby enjoyed the picture auction, but really he was waiting in taut anticipation for the famous screen scene. Thrown into a panic by the arrival of her husband at Joseph Surface's house, Lady Teazle couldn't bear to be found in a tête-à-tête, so she hid behind a screen in the library. 'I'm ruined,' she stage-whispered. 'I'm quite undone!'

  Joseph's bluff brother, convinced there was some minx of a milliner hidden in the library, toppled the screen—and there stood Lady Teazle, exposed to her husband and the world. At this moment the audience, though they knew just what was coming, always let out a howl of shocked delight. It wasn't simply the fun of seeing a married lady shamed by discovery, Derby realised now; it was about the ripping of all veils, the exposure of all forms of sleight and craft. Eliza stood frozen into a statue, like Job's wife, pinned rigid by the crowd's mocking gaze.

  Walpole was whispering in his ear. 'Fanny Abington used to play it for laughs. She'd wring her hands and clutch at her skirts.'

  Derby shook his head. That was the difference between talent and genius. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Mrs Damer was motionless, gripping the edge of the box.

  At the end of the comedy, while Eliza was taking her bows and the crowd roared and whistled, she looked up at the Derby box and gave the three of them a smiling nod.

  'Derby, you must be—' Mrs Damer broke off. 'I'm sure we all feel so proud of her.'

  Walpole sighed pleasurably. 'The man's a rascal, but he can write.'

  'Such rudeness!' Mrs Damer threatened to smack Walpole's knuckles with her folded fan.

  Derby grinned; he would have liked to explain that his friendship with Sheridan was an unsentimental one and that he'd heard him called much worse than rascal.

  Mrs Damer was consulting the smeared print of her programme. 'The crowds are still pushing in for the ballooning piece.'

  Walpole trembled to his feet. 'While I'd very much like to experience aerial locomotion before I die, I've no wish to watch it mimed on stage and it's near midnight. Fairies, let's away.'

  Derby's footman went ahead to clear them a passage through the packed corridors.

  LADY MARY was all blithe humour and never meddled with the preparations for the theatricals at Richmond House, Eliza noticed, but she never let them put her out either. One night, when the dining room was full of props and scenery, she went down to the steward's room quietly and ate her supper there. Eliza was studying the Duchess's serene self-containment; there was a trick Lady Mary had, of smiling beatifically as she said something critical, which Eliza was memorising to use on stage.

  Mrs Damer couldn't have been more different from her sister. Well, they had different fathers, after all; Anne Damer was said to take after hers, the veteran soldier and politician Field Marshal Conway. She could be tactful, but also startlingly frank. The sculptor struck Eliza as a natural for tragedy, with her tireless vitality, her bony hands and long diamond-cut face. Unfortunately, The Way to Keep Him was a comedy.

  'Say the line for me, would you, Miss Farren?' asked Mrs Damer.

  Eliza hadn't got enough sleep after her Ben and her head was aching. There were still all the comic servant scenes to run through; Sir Harry and Mrs Bruce hadn't spoken a line yet today. She sat down at Mrs Lovemore's imaginary tea table, in the corner of the pink saloon, and began with a careless shrug. 'This trash of tea! I don't know why I drink so much of it. Heigho!' Major Arabin clapped; Eliza ignored him.

  'Oh, I see,' said Mrs Damer. 'I never knew quite how to do the Heigho.'

  Behind them, Dick Edgcumbe failed to suppress a yawn; Mrs Hobart was lecturing Mrs Blouse on hairstyles in a whisper.

  'Lighter, simpler, that's what you must remember,' said Eliza. 'From the top—'

  This time Mrs Damer began merrily enough with the tea line, but then sank into lugubriousness on 'Surely never was an unhappy woman treated with such cruel indifference.'

  'The audience must pity you, but don't give way to self-pity,' Eliza told her, 'and for sorrow, by the way, one touches the right hand to one's heart, not the left.'

  Mrs Damer switched hands, frowning in concentration. 'I care not what they say. I am tired of the World, and the World may be tired of me, if it will.' Her tone was guarded, almost bitter.

  Eliza nodded. When this woman got it right, she could act the rest of the Richmond House Players off the stage. 'Now let's try your transformation scene.'

  The others leafed through their parts, but Mrs Damer simply closed her eyes for a moment to summon up the lines, then took up position down front. 'Adieu to melancholy, and welcome pleasure, wit and gaiety,'she. pronounced, sardonic. She marched from side to side of the saloon, singing 'La, la, la. The effect was oddly intimidating.

  Eliza took a breath. 'Might I ask you to stroll rather more slowly and more flirtatiously?'

  'With whom should I flirt?'

  'With no one in particular; with the air. And you could seem more gay.'

  'But Mrs Lovemore's not really gay,' said Mrs Damer, confused.

  'Of course not, but we assume that, being an intelligent woman, she does a good job of acting it.'

  Mrs Damer hesitated. 'I don't know that intelligence is enough. I'm sure she tries, but with her heart so full of rage and shame—'

  'Shame?' asked Eliza. She realised that the background gossip had stopped; the other Players were watching, like a silent chorus.

  'Yes,' said Mrs Damer, 'mortification that she must pose as a shallow lady of the town to win back the love of Mr Lovemore, who doesn't deserve her! That she must contradict her true sensibility, act a mad pantomime, all for a man who'll never be content, never think she's amusing enough, easy enough—'

  'But we know he does love her by the end of the comedy,' objected Derby.

  Mrs Damer shrugged. 'I don't believe it.' 'But that's what happens, my dear Mrs D.,' chipped in Major Arabin, 'and your douces charmes offer motive enough!'

  Mrs Damer had two red spots on her cheekbones. 'I know that's what Mr Murphy wrote, but it rings false to me. How could a sensitive woman ever be happy with a husband like that?'

  Several of the Players were looking at Eliza as if they expected her to intervene, but she didn't understand. At Drury Lane it was never like this, there wasn't enough time in the day. The
very idea of arguing over whether a play was true or false to the human heart!

  Derby broke the strained silence. 'That's enough toing and froing over this scene, surely,' he said. 'Should we have another go at the business in Act Three?'

  Mrs Hobart sidled up to Mrs Damer. 'If something's amiss, if you're unhappy with your part, I could be prevailed upon—for your sake—to exchange it with the Widow Bellmour's—'

  'Nonsense,' said Eliza, too sharply, 'Mrs Damer plays our heroine very well. Nothing's wrong. Is there?'

  Mrs Damer put her hand over her mouth. Then she said, 'Do please be good enough to excuse me' and ran from the room.

  Eliza's heart was thudding. What kind of manager was she, to make her leading actress flee the scene? She put her hand against her mouth, instinctively learning Mrs Darner's gesture: the pressure on her upper lip, the hot breath on her fingers. 'Well,' she said in as light a voice as she could manage, 'she must have remembered another engagement.'

  'Remembered her past, you mean,' said Mrs Hobart with dark relish, flopping down in a pink-and-gilt chair.

  In the silence Eliza felt a hammer knocking against her temples. She looked over at her mother, whose needle was motionless in the air.

  'You could have had no idea, of course, Miss Farren,' said Derby, pulling up a chair for Eliza, 'as it was all over before you came to town.' His small eyes were dark with apology.

  'What was?' she asked, too shrill. 'I know Mrs Darner's husband died young—'

  Mrs Hobart let out a snort. 'They were unhappy from the start. It'd seemed a good match at the time—'

  'Well, yes,' contributed Mrs Blouse, 'since she was the Countess of Ailesbury's daughter, and John Damer had £30,000 a year and the Earl of Dorchester for a father.'

  Sir Harry Englefield shook his head. 'He was a wild young buck, though. After the first few years they lived apart.'

  'Like in our play!' said Mrs Blouse with a squeal of insight. 'Poor Mrs D. couldn't seem to win his love back, no matter what she did.'

  'I'm not sure it was ever a question of love in the first place,' put in Dick Edgcumbe.

  'Or that she tried very hard to win him back,' added Mrs Hobart with a sniff.

  Eliza's cheeks were scalding. What a disaster. How had she got herself tangled up in the secrets of these people? They were a little School for Scandal of their own. What did they think of her peculiar relation to Lord Derby; did they consider her a flirt with her eye on a countess's coronet? What did they say about her as soon as she went home?

  'The fact of the matter is,' Derby told Eliza grimly, 'that the fellow got into such deep debt, together with his brothers, the Damers were going to have to flee to France—but instead he shot himself in a tavern.'

  'No!' Eliza looked round at the lit faces; they seemed to her like pedigree hawks. She was reminded once again of how long they'd all known each other and how little she knew them.

  'It was the Bedford Arms in Covent Garden,' put in Major Arabin. 'But oh, dear, now you'll shudder whenever you have to pass it, a woman of sensibility like yourself.' He laid a sympathetic paw on her shoulder.

  'People were most unkind to Mrs Damer afterwards,' murmured Mrs Hobart. 'Really, it was quite extraordinary, the things that were said!'

  'No need to repeat them,' said Derby.

  'I've no intention of doing so,' she snapped.

  Eliza had managed to edge away from Major Arabin's hand. 'So you see, in today's rehearsal,' murmured Mrs Bruce in her ear, 'to oblige our friend to explain her feelings on the subject of a cold-hearted husband and a shamed wife ... well, you couldn't have known, of course.'

  Eliza bit her Hp hard.

  'Don't distress yourself, my dear,' said Derby.

  She stiffened at the phrase and averted her head. He knew he was never to use endearments in public.

  'Might this be a suitable interval for tea?' The Duchess of Richmond stood in the door of the saloon, blithe as always.

  They all shot up. Had she heard them talking about her sister? If she had you wouldn't know it. The members of the World had such self-mastery, Eliza thought. But then, so had she, once she'd got over her mortification. 'Perfectly suitable, Your Ladyship,' she carolled, leading the group to the door.

  SNOW WAS beginning to fall that afternoon, as if the mildness of March had shrunk backwards into winter. The Derby coach turned on to Grosvenor Square, the largest and most impressive of the three squares in Mayfair. It was more like a parade ground than a place to live, Eliza always thought, but it was popular; she'd once heard Derby mention that more than half its residents were tided. The oval park was thick with trees; the iron railings had a fresh coat of black paint, she noticed, and the statue of George I as a Roman emperor had been regilded.

  'Are you sure it's wise to follow Mrs Darner?' Mrs Farren was clutching her workbag. 'His Lordship himself said it was none of your fault, the little upset.'

  'You go on home, Mother, I won't be long,' said Eliza instead of answering.

  'Well. If you're sure. I suppose it gives you an excuse to pay a call and get on visiting terms,' she added, brightening.

  Eliza suppressed her irritation. Everything was policy for Margaret Farren; every step was an inch further up the ladder.

  As they passed the irregular roof line of the north side she rapped on the ceiling, but the driver didn't rein in till fifty yards on, where the imposing arches and half-columns of Derby House stood out from the terrace.

  'It was number 8 I wanted,' she said, as he opened the door and unfurled a large canvas umbrella.

  'Number 8?' He repeated it as if it were a vastly inferior address. 'Ah, Mrs Damer's. Very good, madam.'

  It nettled Eliza, somehow, to have him guess the name of the person she was visiting, but on the other hand what use was a coachman who didn't know where everybody lived? 'It's all right,' said Eliza, stepping down, 'I'll walk from here.'

  'M'Lord wouldn't like that, not in this weather,' said the coachman, so she sighed and climbed back in. He cracked the whip and turned the horses round; this was the only square where there was enough room for such a manoeuvre without tangling the traces. They were a splendid pair of bays, highly trained as well as handsome, she could tell that much; Derby always had the best carriage horses money and sense could buy.

  'Could you please bring my mother home to Great Queen Street?'

  'Certainly, madam. And I'll be back here whenever you need me,' he said indulgently.

  Mrs Farren stuck her head out of the window as Eliza got down. 'Shall I wait dinner?'

  'No, no.'

  'I'll keep something warm at least,' she cried as the carriage pulled away. The coat of arms, with the motto in Gothic lettering, Sans changer, had already grown a faint mould of snow.

  Eliza's stomach was tight with tension as she rapped on the door of no. 8, a narrow four-storey house in red brick with stone facings and a patterned fanlight. A black footman ushered her into the reception room and took her wraps, which were sprinkled with wet flakes. It was all much smaller than Derby House, of course—just two rooms deep. The furniture was mostly satinwood, with slim legs and an airy, modern feel, and there were shiny brass knobs on all the doors. Eliza noted a marble chimney piece and curtains of striped linen on the tall windows; she relished the crisp feel of the stuff between finger and thumb. 'Excuse me, madam.' Eliza spun round to see a flat-faced woman who had to be the housekeeper. 'Mrs Damer is in her workshop and can't leave off; would you care to come through?'

  Eliza felt oddly honoured. She followed the housekeeper through the wainscoted dining room, which was fitted with Turkish carpet and had the inevitable flattering portrait of Charles James Fox in oils. Eliza was very fond of Fox, whom she'd met even before she'd known Derby, but she couldn't share in the general Whig adulation of their leader. Though he was a marvellous speaker, wasn't his Party still languishing in opposition? Eliza couldn't help but pick up bits and scraps of political information from Derby, but it struck her as being as peculiar and cl
osed a world as his horse racing or cockfighting.

  Without a word the housekeeper opened a door to show a close-stool and Eliza went in to use it; she actually preferred close-stools to the new water closets at Derby House, with their cold marble seats and unpredictable flushes.

  Out she went into the small wet yard and the workshop beyond. It was as plain and crude as any shed, but it glowed with warmth from a stove. Anne Damer stood beside a large angry bird in damp clay. Eliza barely recognised her: gone were the curls, the elegant rings, the sweeping muslin skirts of an hour ago. It was a working woman who looked up, with filthy cuffs, a muddy apron with pockets full of dangerous-looking tools and her head swathed in a sort of bag. There was a smear of something white on the bridge of the long nose. 'Miss Farren! You'll excuse my not shaking hands, won't you, as I'm all over clay?'

  Eliza's prepared words were forgotten. The workshop, the clothes, were wrong for an exquisitely tactful speech meant to be delivered in a pale-blue reception room over Meissen teacups. 'Oh, Mrs Damer,' she said, walking up to her, 'it's you who must excuse me for distressing you so at our rehearsal. I had no idea—so stupidly ill-informed—'

  The sharp face wore a curious expression.

  'At Drury Lane we're accustomed to making a glib show of every human emotion,' Eliza babbled. 'When I think of the number of times I've played an unhappy wife—'

  The sculptor had taken Eliza's hands between her own. 'Calm yourself, my dear girl. You've done no harm.'

  Eliza held on to them as if she were drowning. They were such lean, powerful hands; that must come from the sculpting. 'But you ran from the room—'

  Mrs Damer smiled awkwardly. 'It was a shocking demonstration, wasn't it, in front of my fellow Players?'

  'Not at all, they know your situation. They're old friends.'

  'Well, Derby is; the rest are acquaintances, really.'

  Eliza persisted. 'They must think me a tactless and ignorant stranger who broke in upon your most painful memories.'

  'Hardly a stranger,' said Mrs Damer, smiling. She looked down. 'I've muddied you with my dreadful paws.'