Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  Eliza managed a faint chuckle.

  'I promised her I'd be most discreet—keep all the shutters closed on the Grosvenor Square side—toil in my workshop, have dinner on a tray in the library, with only Seneca and Epictetus for company.'

  Authors, Eliza guessed, and nodded as if she knew them well.

  'If I take Fidelle for a stroll or ride in Hyde Park I go darkly veiled,' Mrs Damer added in Gothic tones.

  'It would take more than a veil to disguise you.'

  The sculptor grinned. 'Now, what can I offer to amuse you?'

  'News,' said Eliza. 'I feel as if I've been lying at the bottom of a well.'

  'Let's see,' said Mrs Damer. 'The Devonshires have gone to boring old Bath.'

  'Lady Bess Foster with them?'

  'Of course; that's a marriage of three souls. I assume you heard about the disaster of the new Royalty Theatre, near Tower Hill?'

  'Oh, Jack!' said Eliza, remembering his plans.

  'You're on first-name terms with Mr Palmer, are you?' Mrs Darner's tone was odd. 'Well, full-scale war broke out in the ranks of Thespis. Sheridan, Harris and Colman made common cause against your Jack; after a single performance of As You Like It the cast were clapped in gaol overnight as vagabonds.'

  'He might have known!'

  'A fool, but a brave one,' said Mrs Damer. 'He's switched to variety performances for the moment, to stay within the law, but he vows he won't shut down.'

  Eliza ravelled the edge of the sheet.

  'You mustn't fret, about this or anything,' Mrs Damer told her, leaning close. 'I fear you succumbed to this nasty fever because you were working too hard and eating too little, quite cut off from your friends...'

  'You're too good to me.'

  'Nonsense,' said Mrs Damer. 'Some neighbour I've been so far! I was the one who encouraged you to move to Green Street, then since June I didn't so much as send a note to enquire about your whereabouts; somehow I assumed you were touring, or on some country estate. You could have died of this fever, two streets from my door! Will you forgive me?'

  'Oh, Mrs Damer, don't talk so.'

  She pressed Eliza's hand. 'I shouldn't take advantage of a convalescent's weakness—but I'm going to ask a favour.'

  'Anything.'

  'Despite the brevity of our friendship—will you call me Anne?'

  SEPTEMBER 1787

  Eliza had forgotten how exhausting a long carriage journey was, especially after an illness. The potholed roads into Oxfordshire shook her like a rattle, slurred the words in her mouth. They had to stop at every toll-pike to pay and overloaded stagecoaches clattered past them, going a dozen miles an hour.

  'You'll feel the better for a cup of strong tea,' said Anne Damer as they crossed the bridge at Henley. With one hand she scratched Fidelle behind the crumpled ears, with the other she cooled Eliza with a large paper fan that bore an illustration of the ruins of Pompeii.

  At the point where the horses turned through a pair of pillars inscribed Park Place and began to climb through dense woods, Eliza's stomach made a wasp's nest of itself. She caught herself thinking what great houses always made her think: I'll be found out. The footman would open the door of the carriage, then say there'd been some mistake; she'd be sent round to the trade entrance.

  Anne touched her arm. 'You're not missing your mother, are you?'

  'Now you're just being polite,' said Eliza. 'It's a treat to travel without my duenna for once.' Though Mrs Farren rather dreaded meeting new members of the aristocracy, it was with some difficulty that Eliza had persuaded her that her daughter would manage perfectly well on her own at Park Place. 'She's my ally and indispensable guard dog—but let's not pretend that it's a matter of kindred spirits.'

  The sculptor was laughing. 'That would be too much to require of a mother; I certainly don't ask it of mine.'

  'Mother's devoted to my success; she wants me to be the performer she never had the talent to be, in all her years in my father's troupe.' With a slight shock Eliza realised that she'd broken a private rule and mentioned George Farren. Since the day she'd gone to shake her father awake from his haze of gin and found him cold, she'd avoided his name. 'She wants success in life for me, too,' she added, not spelling out what that might mean: a countess's coronet. 'But I've never really experienced an intimate friendship; I imagine it as flourishing in idleness, on silk-upholstered sofas.'

  'And on £10,000 a year?'

  'At least,' said Eliza with a grin. The carriage was still climbing; this wasn't an avenue, it was a winding trail, several miles long. Through gaps in the trees, Eliza could see the soft Berkshire slopes fall away down to the Thames: grass and tangled undergrowth, sweeps of dark forestry. A slim branch smacked the open window; a bright green leaf shook in her face.

  'Well, in my experience,' said Anne with a little yawn, 'the ladies with that kind of money are often too busy spending it. Take Lady Melbourne: she and I have been friends ever since we met as new brides, being presented at the same Queen's Drawing Room—but these days she can rarely spare me a private quarter of an hour. Friendship in the World's often kept on such short rations, I don't know how the creature clings to life.'

  'So it's possible that busy females of moderate means have a chance of finding true friendship too?'

  'I think it's a rare bird,' said Anne, her dark eyes fixed on Eliza's, 'and at the first glimpse of its feathers, the first note of its call, you must drop everything else and seize it. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried! she quoted, 'grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.'

  Eliza was picturing a tiny bright bird in hoops of steel.

  'Your only obligation, on this visit, is to get well,' Anne remarked. 'Derby helped me persuade you to come down on the strict understanding that I'd bring you back to London in the pink of health.'

  'By the end of the month, I hope, or Sheridan will start giving my plum roles to Mrs Jordan.'

  'Ah, but those worries must be left behind in the outside world. You're in the forest now. Home at last,' she added, looking out of the window at Park Place and gathering Fidelle into her arms.

  THE HOUSE was only ten windows across and three up, to Eliza's relief—not a fraction of the size of a mansion like Knowsley. (Though she'd never been to Lancashire, she'd memorised every detail of the Derby ancestral seat from an article in the Gentleman's Magazine.) The aged Field Marshal Conway hurried past his footmen to show Eliza to her room himself and there was a fire burning there, in September, 'as we mustn't take risks with your delicate constitution'.

  'My room is just through that little door,' Anne told her when her father had gone downstairs. 'If you need anything, anything at all, in the night, you've only to call.'

  'Maid!' cried Eliza with an imperious click of the fingers. The two of them giggled. 'On second thoughts, no, I shouldn't try that; half a dozen of them might come running.'

  Since Conway had been Governor of Jersey for the past fifteen years, Eliza had prepared by flicking through a book on the geography and manufactures of that island—but it turned out he loathed the place. 'The subjects are loyal, Miss Farren, so I rarely need to show my face,' he assured her. 'On my last trip I whined so much in my letters to Horry that he said I was more like a boy crying for a sugar plum than a servant of His Majesty's government.'

  'Horry's our cousin Walpole,' Anne explained.

  'Yes,' said the Countess of Ailesbury with benign satire, looking up from her worsted frame, 'even when we're only up in town, at our house in Soho Square, my husband's always panting to be back at Park Place, undertaking his improvements.'

  It was from her mother's Campbell family that Anne had inherited her chiselled, handsome features, but where had she got her artistic genius? Lady Ailesbury's copies of Rubens, Gainsborough and Cuyp in thick dull thread were all over the house and uniformly hideous. Anne's energy, however, clearly came from both sides. The elderly couple walked through the meadows and came home covered all over with burrs, went on fishing trips, paid ca
lls on neighbouring estates and delivered hams to the poor.

  At first Eliza moved round Park Place like a frail old woman. She leaned on Anne's arm while walking in the gallery, where a painted host of the aristocratic Campbell connections outfaced a handful of the more low-born Conways. She sat in the kitchen garden and in the flower arcades, where gold and silver fish danced in ponds, and a fountain went up higher than her head. Anne wouldn't let her learn her parts for the autumn, or even write a letter: 'I've told all your friends that the doctor's forbidden you to lift a pen.' Eliza was growing fat and stupid and childishly happy. Well, not the kind of fat that showed—she'd always been considered regrettably thin—but she felt plumped up, somehow; her skin moved slowly and comfortably over her limbs. She rinsed her face twice a day in strawberry water, to clear it of the pallor of illness. Such luxury, to be looked after and waited on, like a real lady of leisure. What a curious life.

  Field Marshal Conway took her south of Park Place to see what he called the Druids' Temple. When the forty-five granite stones had been discovered on Jersey the inhabitants had presented them to their Governor 'as a testimonial of gratitude', then had the cheek to object when he'd had them all shipped back to Berkshire.

  The stone circle on the hill was tiny and incongruously neat; it reminded Eliza of one of the flaky stock scenes at Drury Lane, known as the Old Ruins. 'Magnificent,' she murmured.

  'I've had a French verse about human sacrifice inscribed on the biggest megalith, which is fully eight foot by seven,' said Conway with satisfaction and out of the corner of her eye Eliza was sure she saw Anne suck in a giggle.

  'I'll never get stronger if I don't go further,' Eliza told Anne the next day. They went into the woods in simple walking dresses, saw pale deer among the beeches and the oaks, and small, preoccupied rabbits that Fidelle chased in vain. Anne showed Eliza all her father's follies: the Rustic Arch (made from blocks pillaged from the ruins of Reading Abbey), the Pyramid, the Chinese Cottage where they took tea. 'What's that ravishing scent?' she asked.

  'The lavender stillhouse,' Anne told her. 'He had a notion to use the spare heat from his coke ovens for distilling lavender oil; ours is the only plantation in the country. It hasn't paid for itself yet, but it smells like heaven.'

  They lay back against the trunk of the first Lombardy poplar in England (a very ordinary-looking tree, which some marquis had brought from Paris as a gift for the Countess), idly discussing the progress of the Hastings impeachment. Since she'd come to know the sculptor, Eliza had begun to find politics more engrossing. Not being embroiled in the details of Party business, as Derby was, Anne could pierce to the heart of a controversy and explain why it mattered. 'You'll make a marvellous Whig hostess some day,' Anne remarked, 'perhaps Georgiana's successor.'

  Eliza bristled. 'Lord Derby and I don't speak of the future.'

  'Oh, come now,' Anne told her, 'this isn't one of your brittle comedies! You can speak freely here, Fidelle doesn't spy for the newspapers.' She scratched the dog's white barrel of a ribcage. 'When he's free, you'll marry him, won't you?'

  Eliza gave a short sigh. 'Assuming that when the time comes the question is put to me ... I'll decide then.'

  Anne was staring at her. 'You mean you really don't know?'

  Eliza spoke too sharply. 'Oh, I suppose you think, with the rest of England, that a nobody like me should collapse with humble gratitude at the very idea of such a proposal from an earl?'

  'Not at all,' said Anne, shaking her head, 'quite the contrary. Any man would feel exalted to be your choice.'

  Eliza softened into a smile.

  'But I've always thought—from the terms you and Derby have seemed to be on all these years—he's your constant escort and you have no other—'

  She made a face. 'I tell you this in confidence—'

  'Of course,' said Anne, leaning closer.

  'I can never quite make up my mind about Derby. He's a man of integrity, of course, a diligent politician; a marvellous friend, a dutiful father. He's very polished and his sports are a harmless amusement; he hasn't gambled away his fortune or bred up a nursery of bastards. He's been the most polite and patient of suitors,' Eliza conceded. 'I like him very much indeed.'

  'Only like?'

  Eliza fanned herself crossly. 'It's hard to tell. Since my juvenile infatuation with Jack Palmer, perhaps I've been too busy, or I might have a defective heart. Some days, Derby hops down from his carriage to give me his hand and I find myself thinking, in spite of myself...'

  'Yes?'

  'What a silly little man.'

  She met Anne's eyes. Their peals of laughter went up like birds.

  They ate well at Park Place: guinea fowl and fresh peas, and so many eggs that Lady Ailesbury sent boxes of them up to Twicken ham for Walpole. Conway was trying his hand at a play—well, adapting it from an old French one—and hoped it wouldn't be too much trouble for dear Miss Farren to cast an eye over it? Now Eliza was stronger, they took her on excursions and introduced her to select neighbours; she'd been afraid the local gentry might look askance at an actress, but in fact they all seemed dazzled by her famous name.

  The family walked all the way down to Henley one day, to show her the bridge. 'I had the honour to be a commissioner for its erection,' Conway boasted, 'and it cost £100,000. The workmen were shocking drinkers; after one of them got himself drowned, we made a rule that if the foreman saw a fellow the worse for drink he was to tie him to a tree.'

  'So much for the liberties of the individual,' said Anne with a smile.

  'Better shackled and alive than free and drowned, surely; even dear Fox couldn't dispute that,' put in Lady Ailesbury.

  Eliza picked her way down the bank to examine the carved stone masks on each side of the bridge: Thames, a stern old man, and Isis, a beautiful, sober girl. 'Oh, my dear, what unforgettable faces,' she said to Anne. 'To think of them there, gazing down on the boatmen, while the centuries flow by...'

  Anne gave a little shrug. 'Yes, I suppose my art will last—but sometimes it seems so sluggish of growth, so static.'

  'Well, my talent dies as soon as it's seen, like a sunset,' said Eliza.

  Anne shook her head. 'The play may be fleeting,' she said, 'but the memory of your performance lingers on in our hearts.'

  Eliza laughed and turned away.

  On the way back up the grassy hill her breath began to rasp, but she pressed on; she was almost fourteen years younger than Anne Damer, she reminded herself. Anne stopped and gave her an arm to lean on. 'Our guests have always complained that a visit to Park Place involves a great deal of scrambling. But it gives a good stomach for dinner.'

  It was an indelicate remark, by the World's standards. Eliza grinned back at her friend. Down here in the country many things no longer mattered; London seemed a thousand miles away instead of thirty.

  Dinner was at four, then the Field Marshal and the girls played bowls on the lawn. Eliza tried to remember if she'd ever taken part in a game outdoors on a summer's evening. At nine years old, perhaps? She lost, badly, and didn't mind. The air smelt darkly green. When they came in Eliza insisted she wasn't tired, not at all, so she and Anne and Lady Ailesbury played Pope Joan till ten.

  Anne and she went up the stairs to their rooms, with a candlestick apiece. 'Your father called you Missy this evening,' said Eliza.

  'Did he?' Anne laughed. 'When I was about four years old Walpole used to address me with superb formality as Miss Seymour-Conway, which degenerated into Miss, then Missy.'

  'I was Betsy,' she offered.

  'You weren't!'

  'Wee Betsy Farren, Darling of the Liverpool Pantomime.' She pronounced the phrase with grim relish.

  'But you're such an Eliza! The very definition of an Eliza.'

  'What's an Eliza?'

  'You are,' said Anne. And she leaned over to kiss her good night.

  'YOU'RE TRANSFORMED,' Derby told Eliza on the terrace. 'Park Place has been the making of you.'

  Anne readjusted the s
leeping dog in her arms and watched her friends with an anxious sort of pleasure. Under her parasol the actress now had pink cheeks against her golden hair, but more than that—a new ease, a nonchalance. It struck Anne that this was probably the only time Derby had ever met his beloved without her mute, awkward mother. It was a mystery how a woman who looked every inch the brewer's daughter had given birth to such an exquisite. 'I think she should come to Park Place every summer, for the good of her health.'

  'A capital idea! I used to visit as a child, you know,' Derby told Eliza. 'I remember once my visit overlapped with Monsieur Rousseau's. I wept my eyes sore over his Julie.'

  'Didn't we all,' said Anne. 'I think I read it five times.' The devoted triangle of the two beautiful cousins and their tutor still lingered in her mind, when she'd forgotten so many other plots.

  'I do wish I could stay more than two days,' said Derby, turning to take in the whole sweep of forest and valley, 'but Fox insists we all get together at Devonshire House to make plans, even though the Session's still six weeks off. He's rather upset about these riots in Glasgow.'

  'I'm afraid we've been so cut off here...' Anne began.

  'Oh, I beg your pardon. It's the cotton weavers, they've been on strike all summer, you see.' He paused. 'When they started throwing stones at the blacklegs it seems the troops opened fire and killed half a dozen.'

  Anne was shaken. 'Guns against stones?'

  'They must have been starving to try it; the strikers, I mean,' said Eliza.

  A silence. It occurred to Anne that while she and Derby had never gone to bed hungry in their lives, the same couldn't be true of a child among strolling players. When Anne tried to imagine the lives of the poor in detail she always got a kind of vertigo. What sort of squalid lodgings might a Glasgow cotton weaver live in? Surely, in a country so prosperous and peaceful, something could be done to relieve such miseries? But no, the government simply sent in the troops; how typical of Pitt and all his hatchet-faced henchmen. If only Britain were governed by a man with a conscience—with some sympathy and imagination. 'Derby,' she said suddenly, 'if you were to make a wager—will Fox come to power in the next five years?'