Life Mask

by Emma Donoghue

  'Oh, but Betsy!'

  Eliza ignored the old name. 'This is no time for capitulation, Mother. I must hold to my dignity.' She chewed the beef, though it was hard to swallow.

  She barely slept that night. As she lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, she wondered what the next morning would bring. A note from Sheridan, telling her that her services were no longer required at Drury Lane? Well, then, she could drive over to Covent Garden and tell Harris it was his lucky day. This fight was worth it, Eliza told herself. If one let people walk all over one—

  And suddenly, oddly, she found herself missing Anne Darner. Mrs Farren was a stout ally, but she still thought like a provincial small-timer; the height of her ambition was for her daughter to please everyone. This was the kind of crisis that had to be mulled over with a friend and what real friends did Eliza have these days? Her colleagues were too involved themselves; they might consider that on £18 a week she'd no reason to complain. As for Derby, she couldn't talk about the crises of her profession to him because he'd wax gallant and lose his temper. He might threaten to call on Kemble himself as her agent—which could end up with Sheridan challenging the Peer to a duel in Hyde Park. Or, almost worse, Derby might tell her it was beneath her dignity to work for such masters and offer to pay her a yearly stipend himself. Yes, what Eliza needed was an intelligent woman friend, who knew the pros and cons of wrath and civility—but somehow her life didn't include any. There was something about being a famously beautiful actress that discouraged female friendship. Were all women rivals, then, in the end?

  The next morning brought a brief note from Palmer—Cheeky lass! We had to do The Beggar's Opera instead and I fluffed my lines in the last act—and another with the Derby crest on it that asked for assurance that she was not seriously ill. There was also a surprisingly mollifying note from Kemble, with a parcel that turned out to con- ' tain a new dress. He must have bought it ready made. It was blue lustring, cut in the latest slim style with quite a high waist, a white sash tied in a bow behind, and an overskirt of spangled gauze.

  Miss Farren,

  I trust you'vefully recovered from your indisposition & that it's not a lingering or recurring disease? I enclose your new costume & hope to see you in it tonight.

  With respect,

  J. P. Kemble

  'So you won!'

  'This battle, yes, Mother, I suppose so,' said Eliza, examining the rough edge of the sash.

  'Well, I never. I take my hat off to you, daughter, I really do. A good strengthening ragout for your dinner, I think...' And Mrs Farren bustled off downstairs to the kitchen.

  Eliza didn't feel as triumphant as she expected. Until now she'd been known for being ladylike, unlike Dora Jordan, who relied on outrageousness and charm. But really, sometimes only gutter tactics worked.

  The Derby carriage was already waiting outside when a slim packet arrived from Mrs Piozzi. My dear, said the note, this is most distressing, but I thought you'd appreciate seeing a copy before anyone mentions it to you. Eliza steeled herself. It was a strange friend who relished nothing better than to be a bearer of bad news.

  A Peep Behind the Curtain at Widow Bellmour, the cheap print was called, alluding to the role she most often played in The Way to Keep Him. Its ink was still smeary. It showed her naked in the Green Room, trying to cover herself with her hands like a statue. Words bubbled out of her mouth.

  Here I stand a fresh proof of the Manager's meanness,

  Not a rag to my back like the Medici's Venus!

  At their second-hand wardrobe I turn up my nose,

  By the Lord I won't act till they find me new clothes.

  And there, ogling sympathetically through a parted curtain, was Lord Derby. Not that he really looked like a swollen-headed goblin boy, but over the years Eliza had become familiar with these cartoon distortions. Oh, fie you, Sheridan, curse your niggard heart, he was crying,

  Why won't you let Miss Farren dress her parts'?

  Were I of Drury's property the sovereign,

  I'd give the lovely maiden choice of covering!

  She had to read it twice before she understood the lewd puns: parts and covering, like the mating of dogs or horses.

  Eliza wouldn't cry; she wouldn't get angry, even. It could have been worse; imagine if the print had shown Anne Damer peering through the curtain? She tore it neatly in two. She'd won the battle with management and that was what mattered, wasn't it?

  At Julia's entrance in Scene Two that night Eliza's admirers sent up a burst of applause, but there were some catcalls too. She knew an apology was expected, so she walked to the edge of the stage and made a deep curtsy. Derby, in his box, gave her a fervent smile. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' she said, seeming to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye, 'you see that even the slightest mark of your disapproval touches me to the quick. I beg leave to assure you that I'd never have absented myself from the duties of my profession but out of grave indisposition.' She pressed her hand to her chest as if she was having difficulty breathing. 'In light of the many years I've had the honour and happiness to serve you, I can only appeal to the gallant protection of the British public.'

  The cacophony of clapping drowned out the few lingering hisses. Well, at least that's done with, thought Eliza as she turned and launched into her opening lines.

  But she was wrong. Dora Jordan, halfway through her speech about her poor cousin's endless engagement, suddenly deviated from the usual gestures. 'This ungrateful Faulkland' she said, jerking her head unmistakably in the direction of the box where Derby sat, arms on the railing, watching the action. The quicker members of the audience began to giggle and Mrs Jordan went on meaningfully, '... who will ever delay assuming the right of a husband, while you suffer him to be equally imperious as a lover!'

  By now the joke was spreading among the audience; laughter pooled and flowed. Mrs Jordan stood, grinning broadly; she gave another little jerk of the head in Derby's direction, in case anyone had missed her meaning, and the laughter built to a crescendo. Eliza was rigid with rage. Was this the hussy's own idea, to give the lines an extra piquancy at her rival's expense, or was she following Sheridan's instructions? Not Kemble's, surely; he hated to mar a play with contemporary references—but perhaps he'd do it for the sake of punishing her. She allowed herself a tiny glance at Derby, who'd sat back and folded his arms like a calm sportsman. Didn't he care that she was being laughed at by several thousand Londoners? No, she scolded herself, he's just refusing to be ruffed. If I were a true lady I'd do the same.

  Eliza opened her mouth to say her next line, but nothing came. Her cheeks began to scald under their coat of paint. 'Nay—' she began. For the first time in many years she'd forgotten her part. 'Nay—

  'Neighhhhhh!' A wit in the pit reared up like a horse and hilarity filled the house.

  AFTER MORE than three months in Lisbon, Anne was thriving. The language wasn't difficult for a woman who already knew French, Italian, Latin, Greek and some Spanish. After the terrible earthquake thirty-five years ago, which had left 60,000 dead, the streets of Lisbon's Lower Town had been laid out with a classical grace—but they were full of skinny, howling dogs. The innkeeper's children laughed to see Miladi Damer with her miniature greyhound tucked into the crook of her elbow like a baby and they crowded round when she fed Fidelle from her own plate.

  But Anne passed most of each day quite alone, in her cabinet, as she called it: a tiny whitewashed room at the back of the inn, half filled by a farmhouse chimney in rough stone, with a table, two chairs, and a shelf for her books and writing things. (Bet and Sam slept in the maids' and men's attics.) Why, she wondered, had she ever felt she needed more? What did she do with all that space, back in Grosvenor Square, except stuff it with possessions?

  The Portuguese intrigued her; the women hid their faces behind a fine black mantilla called a velo, and the poor of both sexes enclosed their hair in a mesh with a bow over the forehead and a long tassel behind; Anne drew Mary a little sketch of it in a
letter. The labourers she saw in the fields seemed to work sporadically and sleep long in the same coarse cloak and slouch hat. When she'd first arrived the November wind had rushed into her cabinet through a broken pane of glass, because although she sent Sam after the workmen a dozen times a day, with his ten words of Portuguese, neither entreaty nor money would bring them in till it suited their convenience. Now she knew never to expect immediate service; she was learning the local rhythm. She modelled a little in clay, but nothing strenuous; Portuguese indolence was evidently catching.

  In bed at night, with Fidelle coiled at her feet, she took strong Masulipatam snuff and reread letters, especially Mary's. The Berrys were passing the winter at Pisa, rather than Florence, because some Englishwomen in the Florentine colony had proved decidedly demi-rep and Mary hadn't wanted either to offend them by refusing their acquaintance, or risk her and her sister's reputations by contamination. Would that I'd been so sensible, when I was your age, Anne answered ruefully, alluding to her subject, as they called it. What a luxury it is, all this 'thinking together' on paper, she added.

  You need hardly have told me—tho'I liked to hear it—that your soul when unconfined flies to my side, for I've felt it hovering about me on a hundred occasions—in all my walks to Roman aqueducts or Gothic churches or olive groves, whenever contemplating the sea £sf even in the midst of tiresome company. What is distance to two sincere hearts?

  The Portuguese aristocracy, their clothes encrusted with jewels from their South American colonies, kept to themselves in superb dignity; unlike their British equivalents, they had no gambling clubs or racecourses. Really, Anne would have been happy enough to live like a hermit in her cabinet, but Lisbon had an English population of considerable self-importance, so sometimes she felt obliged to accept invitations, which meant getting into one of her silk costumes and having Bet do her hair. (The girl wasn't a patch on a French hairdresser, but it was better than nothing.) All Anne had ever found available for hire was an awkward two-wheeled chaise, which let in the rain on her skirts as the mules strained up and down the vertiginous shattered pavements of the city.

  On Saturday one had to go to the French ambassadress's; on Sunday to the opera or theatre. The players were all male, and watching a swarthy boy in powder and hoops play Viola in Portuguese was not Anne's idea of entertainment. She could still conjure up the image of Eliza Farren in the role. Was it because she'd shaped that face with her fingers and cut it out of a block of stone? So far from. England, I seem to be shedding painful memories as easily as hair, or nail parings, she wrote to Mary, only my few real affections bind me to my homeland.

  Thursday afternoons were Mrs Walpole's—wife to the British Minister, Robert Walpole, who was one of Horry's cousins. The Minister took to his distant relation immediately, invited her to dinners and sat her at his right hand, boasting of her artistic reputation. His guests were the kind of English who always drifted to foreign towns, Anne observed: fat, husband-hunting girls and their scowling fathers, most of them merchants from the English factory.

  By the third course, on one such evening, the Minister had had too much porto and began boasting of how he had rid Lisbon of the notorious William Beckford. 'Little did the cur realise,' he trumpeted, 'that one moment of vile self-indulgence had toppled him from his fashionable pedestal for ever and all his money couldn't buy it back!'

  'Excuse me,' interrupted the French ambassadress, 'but what was this Beckford's crime?'

  There was an awkward pause. 'The worst, madame,' blurted Robert Walpole, before anyone could change the subject. 'At Powderham Castle in '83 he was discovered in a bedchamber—with a boy.'

  'Not to excuse the crime, just as a point of interest,' remarked a visiting baronet, 'young Viscount Courtenay doesn't seem to have been quite the innocent his uncle claimed at the time. Now he's grown up, he's so effeminate in his manner his fellow peers call him Kitty!'

  'Which to my mind proves, sir, that Beckford corrupted him fully,' barked the Minister.

  The ambassadress spoke up mildly. 'But in. France, you know, since last year this is no longer a crime.'

  Several pairs of eyes bulged, including those of the Minister's wife. Anne kept her head down. The subject—too like her own—made her nervous. Gossip travelled by water as fast as by land; could anyone here have heard the rumours that stuck like burrs to the name of Mrs Damer?

  'Well, madame, whatever the dangerous innovations of your nation,' said Robert Walpole, 'I'm proud to report that my own is pre-eminent in the punishment of sodomites. We won't have such monsters on British soil; we never let a year go by without hanging one or two, or stoning them in the pillory, which is what would have happened to Beckford if he'd been a shoemaker instead of the heir to a sugar empire!'

  The Frenchwoman gave a graceful shrug. 'As a lady, I must re-sign all such unpleasant questions for the gentlemen to adjudicate.'

  This sentiment met with general approval; then the ladies withdrew and left the gentlemen to their toasts.

  Anne couldn't sleep that night. Such vengeful fury in Robert Walpole's eyes! She knew what sodomites did was wrong and against the natural order—but so were other things she read about in the newspapers, like unwanted babies being thrown into drains; she didn't know why sodomy was the worst of crimes. So many of the great Ancients appeared to have indulged in it, judging by their writings—so why was Beckford a monster? Besides, he'd never been proven guilty; he was said to have loved his poor wife dearly. Who better than Anne to know that shocking rumours could be built on foundations of air? Not that her case was the same as Beckford's, of course. What she stood accused of by those awful pamphlets was a shameful matter, but she'd never heard of it being prosecuted as a crime. Perhaps it was so rare, so bizarrely obscure a female vice, that it had never been put on the statute books. She shuddered and rolled over in bed, raising a yip of protest from Fiddle.

  How I wish you were here in Italy, my dear A.! The idea of our travelling together in some future time keeps returning to my mind—my narrow, irritable mind, which has made my life (tho' lacking in incident) one of constant agitation & which on melancholy days is not sufficiently uplifted by the incomparable art of the Quattrocento.

  She heard from Mary every day or two and from Walpole more irregularly, since the posts from England might bring her nothing for a fortnight, then three packets all at once. He had a horror of his writings falling into strangers' hands; although he was careful not to talk French politics (and this was a great relief to Anne), he was haunted by the possibility that his letters would end up being read aloud in the Assembly.

  I do apologise for my illegibility; the gout & rheumatism have formed a coalition against me. You ask about my sleep & I can assure you that it is excellent, in that I do little but sleep, or walk three steps leaning on the shoulder of my sulky Swiss valet. In this vegetative state I scarce see anybody, nor can have anything to talk of but my suffering, helpless self. I let you know these details, my dear Anne, so that, should the conclusion prove fatal, you might not be wholly unprepared.

  She knew half of it must be hyperbole, but she wept anyway. She even thought of going home early—but then she might never see Spain. And besides, she knew hers wasn't the face Walpole longed for.

  Yes, he misses you & his other Berries sorely, she wrote to Mary, but I can't believe he'd want you to curtail this Grand Tour of yours; he only needs to relieve his woes on paper. Those of us who pinefor you, know there are good reasons to bear it.

  The strange thing was she felt even closer to Mary than when she'd been round the corner in Mayfair. By now there was no subject their correspondence hadn't covered, from their notions of the afterlife to their failure to love their families enough, to their hopes of Reform (Anne wanted MPs elected annually to make them more accountable and houses of refuge for impoverished spinsters; Mary wondered if the death penalty could be lifted from petty crimes of theft). Each knew the other's income, hat size, digestive troubles and bad habits. (Mary wrote i
n the margins of books she didn't agree with; Anne picked her teeth with her thumb.) Anne's writing was tighter than Mary's and heavier. She sealed her folded pages with a rectangular mark like a chisel bite, on rfed wax; Mary with a circle on black wax.

  In Walpole's next letter he seemed somewhat revived by having so much bad news to communicate. Not only had a hurricane burst the Thames's banks and smashed chimneys (including Anne's at Grosvenor Square), but the collapse of a share syndicate had rocked the Stock Exchange. Georgiana was said to have lost the unimaginable sum of £50,000 and her Devonshire relatives were so furious they'd taken to cutting her in public.

  Your friend F-x calls every budget, treaty or amendment Pitt proposes 'untimely, ill-advised, ill-begotten or unconstitutional'—which achieves little, but provides entertainment, & keeps everyone on their toes. Of your sister's husband I must say that R—m—d seems ever more unhappy in the Cabinet. His latest hobby-horse is an Ordnance Survey for the better defence of the realm, which he claims will map out the whole island at the minute scale of one inch to one mile!

  Anne put the page down, half read. Fidelle wasn't herself, hadn't been for several days now. She'd stopped running, jumping and eating; she lay listlessly under her mistress's skirts, her tail between her legs. Her eyes seemed cloudy, her pointed hose too dry. Anne stroked the warm silvery throat, felt for the irregular pulse. Was it the change of climate, or could she have eaten poison? The dog was only nine; she should have another half-dozen years ahead of her.

  The next day Fidelle was no better and barely lapped at a saucer of water. Not here, Anne said in her head, not now, not while I'm away from everyone and everything! know. She wrote to no one but Mary. You'd hardly credit what a desperate state I'm in; I sent a note to the Minister, but all he told me was that lapdogs don't thrive out here. Fidelle is entirely dependent on me, & I can do nothing for her.