Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  The crowd was shuffling and pushing out. 'Can you drop me home? My carriage's got a broken wheel,' said Bunbury.

  'If you help me find mine.'

  It was a humid June night; Derby's shirt was sticking to his ribs. They stood on the corner, looking up and down the crowded street, till Derby's coachman managed to thread his way through the other carriages to his master.

  'How much did you drop on the Yellow? I'm down by £50.'

  'Nothing,' said Derby.

  His old friend glared at him. 'I told you to put £100 on that bird.'

  'Well, just as well I didn't, since it's coq-au-vin by now.'

  Bunbury's bristling eyebrows met. 'Don't tell me you backed the Red,' he said.

  'I didn't wager tonight.'

  'What, at all?' Bunbury puzzled over this. 'Are you broke, M'Lord?' he asked satirically. 'Or ill?'

  'I didn't care who won.'

  Bunbury blinked twice. 'That's not like you. So why did you go, if you weren't meaning to stake so much as sixpence either way?'

  'I wanted to see it,' said Derby through his teeth.

  AFTER THE terrible scene at the Richmond House Theatre, Lord Derby hadn't sent a single note to Eliza, or even his footman to enquire after her health, but his carriage did continue to turn up outside her door every day, as always. Mrs Farren saw this as a hopeful sign—'a mark of great politesse,' she called it—but Eliza knew it for what it was: an outstretched claw. Derby was a stubborn man and he thought he could win her back by mute pressure. Well, she didn't need an armorial carriage (Sans changer, it nagged her, Sans changer) and she didn't need a maritally entangled aristocrat who had nothing better to do than hang around her like a noose. So every day she told the coachman, 'Please tell your master that we don't require his carriage.'

  After a week it stopped showing up. Perversely, this made Eliza afraid. Her mother preserved a stiff silence on the matter. At first Eliza had felt that this hiatus was a punishment she was inflicting on Derby; now it occurred to her that he was punishing her. The afternoons were warm, so she walked down Drury Lane to the theatre, or hailed a hackney if it was raining; she was getting used to their scarred upholstery, the marks of other people's muddy boots. She was working very hard to memorise her last role at Drury Lane this season—the satirical spinster Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing—as well as her new ones for the summer season at the Haymarket. She hadn't time to consider what it would be like to be an unmarried actress who was no longer being wooed by the richest man in England.

  It was in a Mount Street hat shop that Eliza bumped into Mrs Damer. 'My dear,' said the sculptor, 'it seems for ever! I've been working so hard on a bust of my mother, I've barely been out.' She admired Eliza's green silk redingote with black buttons. 'You're always such a picture of elegance.' Eliza memorised the compliment for her mother, who had a sharp eye and helped her pick out her costumes every morning.

  They ordered some raspberry ice to eat at one of the little tables. Mrs Damer was dithering between a slouch hat in felt and shirred silk, and a high-crowned beaver with tassels, for her daily ride. She went on and on about what a friendly fellow feeling the theatricals had produced among the Players, whose constant company she missed. 'Such a distressing sensation, when the mob broke the windows, though,' she murmured. 'I've always thought of myself as a friend to the people, a true follower of our dear Fox. But that night, with broken glass all over the floor, I must confess I shrank from my own countrymen as from wild beasts. So fortunate that you'd gone home early,' she added, patting Eliza's hand.

  Conversations with Mrs Damer never stayed on the surface for long. So Derby mustn't have said a word to his old friend about the quarrel, Eliza realised. The ice was tasteless on her tongue. Had he told no one, then? Or was Eliza being discussed at this very minute, with coarse contempt, in the coffee room at Brooks's Club? She shook herself slightly. 'I've had a hard morning's shopping. Drapers, confectioners—I couldn't resist those new chocolate drops at Gunter's—and then three different hat shops, looking for the perfect bergère.'

  'I think you've found it,' said Mrs Damer, nodding at the box between them, which held an immensely wide, shallow-crowned straw with ribbons to tie it on.

  'But should I wear it with fresh flowers, or a lace valance?'

  'Lace.'

  'You're right. I'm no child of Nature,' said Eliza drolly.

  'I'm surprised not to find Derby at your side today, carrying your purchases in his usual devoted-servant style,' said Mrs Damer, looking her in the eye.

  'Ah,' said Eliza, her mind a blank. How to turn this conversation? The pause was already too long.

  The brown eyes were very penetrating. 'Is he busy at the Lords? My father thinks it's dreadful for the country, the way Sessions stretch right into summer nowadays.'

  It would be so easy to nod, but Eliza said, 'I've no idea where or how Derby is. The fact is I haven't seen him since that night at Richmond House.'

  'Ah,' said Mrs Damer and spooned up the last of her raspberry ice.

  Eliza never knew which way this woman was going to turn. On an impulse she asked, 'Was there anything at all you liked about being married?'

  'Well, let me see.' Mrs Damer sucked her spoon. 'I was considerably richer than I am now—or at least I lived high. I refused no invitations and dressed well, though not as well as John did; he was such a dandy, he even rouged his mouth. Of course, I was very young, with a shallow taste for glamour and luxury; I didn't know my own nature,' she added. 'Lady Melbourne and Georgiana and I did a lot of gadding about to masquerades. We had our hair dressed three feet high—oh, how it hurt,' she said, touching her hand to her soft curls reminiscently—'ornamented with birds and fruit, or a ship in full sail. And we played silly tricks.'

  'Such as?' asked Eliza.

  'Oh, you know; we ran round Ranelagh Gardens popping our cheeks.' Mrs Damer demonstrated by puffing her cheeks up like balloons and bursting them with two fingers.

  Eliza suddenly remembered doing the same thing as a child. She let out such a loud laugh that a couple at a nearby table stared at her. Wonderful, she thought irritably, now there'd be a paragraph in the papers about a prominent Comedienne heard guffawing in a Mount Street hat shop.

  Their kettle arrived. 'This trash of tea!' said Mrs Damer with a languid sigh. 'I don't know why I drink so much of it.'

  'Heigho!' Eliza finished the quote, grinning at her.

  'In the end I sickened of all the high jinks,' confided Mrs Damer. 'After a few years John and I couldn't bear the sight of each other and he moved out. Then, when he came to me and said he and his brothers were so deep in debt with the Jews—'

  'How much?' Eliza put in, unable to stop herself.

  Mrs Damer blew on her tea. '£70,000,' she whispered with dark relish.

  Eliza couldn't imagine quite how one could run up such a debt—enough to buy a dozen houses. She added another jagged lump of sugar to her cup. She and her mother had never bought sugar for their tea till Eliza had made her début at Drury Lane ten years ago and received her first London wage; for her it would always be the taste of the city.

  'He told me to pack my trunks for France, before he could be arrested,' Mrs Damer went on. 'Then, when I'd said all my good-byes, I got the news that John had wound up the comedy with a suicide.'

  Eliza knew not to offer sympathy. 'That would never do on the stage.'

  Mrs Damer gave her a rueful smile. 'No, because it's not a real ending, is it? It leaves everything hanging. All I felt was rage that the man had chosen the most shameful way of escaping from his cares—upstairs in a public tavern, at three o'clock in the morning,' she murmured in Eliza's ear, leaning across the table, 'after carousing with four harlots and a blind fiddler.'

  'No!'

  'Ladies, can I show you anything else today?' asked the shopkeeper.

  Mrs Damer waved him away. 'Of course, he was declared lunatic, as suicides always are, but the truth is that John was a coward.' She spooned up some sugar from the
bottom of her cup. 'He left me bankrupt at twenty-eight, and my vile father-in-law put all the blame on me and made me sell my jewels to set against John's debts.'

  'Oh, my dear,' said Eliza, 'what a story!'

  'It'd do for a cheap three-volume novel, I suppose. Other things happened too, as a consequence; appalling things I don't like to recall. Like a dirty thumbprint on my life.' Eliza waited, but Mrs Damer, fiddling with the knot of her lace apron, didn't elaborate. 'However,' she said finally, 'my husband's exit was the making of me, though I wouldn't say so to anyone less understanding. In fact, I've never spelled it out to anyone but you, Miss Farren.'

  'I'm—I'm honoured,' said Eliza. When the Richmond House theatricals had ended she'd known she risked slipping out of that circle—Derby's circle. But today she thought perhaps she was going to retain Anne Damer's friendship after all, despite their differences in age and rank and education.

  'These days, with my widow's jointure—£2500 a year,' Mrs Damer added frankly—'I have a comfortable sufficiency.'

  It was actually less than Eliza had assumed; many ladies lived and dressed less well than Mrs Damer on twice that. Eliza and her mother, on the £1200 or so she made from wages and Bens, had to be very careful and resourceful; food was a terrible expense these days and lighting was worse.

  'I can live and buy my marble blocks, and travel too,' Mrs Damer continued, 'because a widow may do what an unmarried woman mayn't. I've discovered what few women know: to live alone has its own pleasures. John gave me back my liberty before I was old, so I suppose I should thank him for that much. Also, the scandal parted the sheep from the goats,' Mrs Damer added grimly. 'Those who were fearful of taint by association simply melted away. Georgiana was splendid, of course, and Lady Melbourne too; she said Good riddance to bad rubbish! And I'll always be grateful to Fox, because it was he who broke the news of the suicide to me when no one else dared. He galloped to catch up with my carriage—his horse almost dead under him—and he took my hand in his hot paws and said, My very dear friend, don't go home tonight.' Mrs Darner's eyes were shining.

  'Fox hung around me my first season at Drury Lane,' Eliza said lightly, 'till I was misguided enough to accept a breeches part and he swiftly came to the conclusion that I was far too skinny for him.'

  Mrs Damer put her head back and laughed. 'Such strange tastes men have. Tell me, have you ever been in love?'

  Eliza was staggered by the question.

  'I beg your pardon, I don't know where that came from. I've no right to know.' But Mrs Darner's lips were curling into a smile. 'I only ask because I've never fallen into those dread thralls myself.'

  The two of them had been speaking so freely in this cramped little shop—discussing money and marriage and other matters of life and death—that Eliza felt it would be childish to back off now. She spoke very low. 'Nor I. Unless a juvenile infatuation counts.'

  'A fellow actor?' whispered Mrs Damer.

  Eliza winced at her accuracy.

  'Was it ... Kemble?'

  'Oh, no,' said Eliza, appalled at the thought of that saturnine jaw. 'This was years ago, before Kemble ever came to Drury Lane.'

  Mrs Damer waited, her long arms crossed on the table.

  'No, my preference has always been for comedy over tragedy,' murmured Eliza.

  'Palmer? Plausible Jack!' Mrs Darner crowed quietly. 'I've guessed it, haven't I? And is he so very plausible?'

  'Well,' said Eliza, embarrassed, 'he's certainly charming. But I don't think it counts as love; I was only a girl.'

  'Like Juliet was, or Viola?'

  Eliza chuckled, conceding the point. 'Oh, but it was no grand passion, I assure you; it was petty and miserable. The others used to mock me in the Green Room because I'd been unwise enough to mention that I could recognise the sound of his footsteps. They'd cry, Here comes Jack, pit-a-pat!—and pretend to swoon.'

  'What humiliation.' Mrs Darner's brown eyes were eager. 'And did Palmer reciprocate your feelings?'

  'Oh, I doubt he even noticed. Jack's so civil and obliging, he flirts equally with all the actresses and even the dressers. But then someone must have told him about the state of my poor juvenile heart because one night, after a performance, he came upon me in a corridor—he'd drunk rather a lot, I must say that in his defence—and he ... insulted me,' said Eliza, hot-cheeked as she re-sorted to the hackneyed phrase.

  'I don't see how drunkenness is any excuse.'

  Eliza shrugged. 'He was under the impression that I'd welcome his embraces. I screamed like a banshee; he got such a fright.'

  'Better than he deserved!'

  'He's been a true friend to me since,' Eliza told her; 'it was only a momentary misunderstanding.'

  Head on one side, Mrs Damer was considering her. 'I wonder if he's ever regretted the occasion. If he'd begun more respectfully—how strange to think you might have been Mrs Palmer.'

  Eliza tingled with something like disdain. 'Oh, he was married already. I've met Mrs Palmer, as it happens, and her dozen children. He makes her very unhappy.'

  'Ah.'

  'I don't know what my fate may be,' Eliza added, 'but I know this much: I could never have been Mrs Palmer.' She pulled her watch out of her bodice. 'Which reminds me, I'm going to be late for a rehearsal of The Way of the World.'

  She gathered up her parcels, but Mrs Damer offered to have them all sent on to Great Queen Street. 'You must come to dinner some time. Will you?'

  'There's nothing I'd like more.'

  THE UNDER-PROMPTER, William Powell, was overseeing the rehearsal in the Green Room. 'That's two of Millamant's scenes missed at two and six each, Miss Farren.'

  'Yes, just note it down in the book,' said Eliza, trying to keep her patience.

  'It's dreadfully hot in here, Powell. Can't we use the stage?' asked John Bannister pleasantly.

  'They're setting up the flats for Caractacus,' said the under-prompter, eyes on his curling script. 'Now, Act Two, Scene Five, if you please.'

  Tall and plump, Palmer was lounging against the wall, the bags under his eyes showing he was well past forty. 'I've got a bloody demon of a headache. Haven't I said it before, Eliza?' He yawned. 'Group rehearsals of an old play only deaden it.'

  'Come now, Jack, it's just the one, to refresh our memories; we haven't played The Way of the World in years,' said Eliza. She felt oddly awkward after her revelations in the hat shop. Palmer was the only colleague with whom she was on first-name terms; she and Tom King went back together as far as Garrick's day too, but somehow he was always Mr King, whereas Jack was Jack.

  In the corner a wail went up; Mrs Jordan was rocking her enormous baby. She turned to Palmer, wide-eyed, and spoke in her lilting Irish accent. 'Perhaps we should simply trust you to turn up knowing your lines?'

  The Bannisters, father and son, roared at the idea and so did Jack himself. 'Rather more than half the time,' he protested with a grin. 'And if I dried, Powell could feed me the words—or I could ad lib, or use my old trick of inserting that all-purpose speech from The Earl of Essex.'

  'Please, spare us Essex,' begged Eliza. 'Well, for my part I rather welcome the chance to practise my cues and movements,' she added, crossing the playing area to be ready for her entrance.

  'Very industrious of you, madam,' said Mrs Jordan, reaching into her muslin fichu and unlacing her bodice to pop the infant's head in. 'But some of us have other demands on our time.'

  Eliza shot her a contemptuous glance. Really, it was no accident that the actress's assumed surname, Jordan, happened to mean chamber pot. Was the woman really boasting of having Ford's bastard latched to her bosom—and another on the way, to judge from her loose wrapper? The most irritating thing was that Dora Jordan, pink-cheeked, had never looked prettier.

  'Now, I've spoken to you before about bringing the child,' said Powell gloomily, 'and you gave me your assurance—'

  'Oh, don't fuss, dear Willy,' said Mrs Jordan, 'the mite will be quiet as cotton. I'm ready now. Enter Mrs Fainall, left of stage?
' She strolled to her place, the baby's milky mouth working vigorously.

  Jack, elbows against the wall, cradled his head. 'How,' he whispered to Eliza, 'am I supposed to exchange sophisticated repartee with that?

  A tap at the door; Sarah Siddons and her brother Kemble. 'I wonder,' she began gravely, 'might we beg leave to intrude upon your patience and practise quietly in the corner?'

  Palmer let out a groan.

  'Plenty of room,' said Bannister the Elder, skipping sideways.

  The room got hotter and stuffier. The Way of the World actors ran through the scenes at speed, muttering their lines but making, sure to get every step, pose and traditional bit of business right; Powell was a stickler and cleared his throat to stop the action if they diverged in any way from his notations. During a long and particularly witty speech of Eliza's, the baby's head lolled and some milk dripped on to the floor before Dora Jordan got her damp fichu adjusted; Eliza averted her eyes. Shameless creature!

  What made it even harder to concentrate was that in the corner Siddons and Kemble were doing the Knocking at the Gate from Macbeth. Even just running through the business without the words, they were riveting; Kemble's asthmatic cough only added to his air of panic and Eliza couldn't keep her eyes from following his sister's torturous hands. At one point Mrs Siddons bent in two as if she'd been stabbed in the stomach and then reared up, her face a mask of rage.

  'Millamant's cue,' muttered Powell. '"Some do say—"'

  'Yes, pardon me. I know the line,' Eliza interrupted.

  When they were finally released, she rushed off to the proprietor's office before anyone else could get hold of him. There was no answer to her knock—but after a few minutes he strode down the corridor, his arms full of rolled-up papers. 'Good day,' she began with a civil little curtsy.

  'Is it?' Sheridan, raised one eyebrow.

  She ducked after him into his office before he could shut the door. 'Now, I hate to make a fuss—but really, you must have Cumberland rewrite my new part. I sent you a letter yesterday—'