by Jon Redfern
“Your name?” he asked.
“Betty Loxton, your grace.”
“Have you performed before?” wondered Dupré. The master’s eyes were held on Betty’s face.
“Nights at the Gaff, sire, near St. Paul’s. I do a ’pipe as well as any. I can sing ‘Clari,’ and…”
“Thank you, miss,” said Dupré. “Stand aside.”
The young gal dropped her head. She stepped out of the line, brushed down her skirt, and as she walked to the far end of the room, Reggie could see how disappointment bent her shoulders. Mr. Dupré meandered through the rest, tapping some on the shoulder, dismissing others to stand aside. Hartley walked behind him, holding the book of names, and Crabb handed the old man the quill pen to dip in the portable ink well and cross out the names of those not wanted. Dupré examined everyone quickly a second time, but Reggie noticed his master kept flashing his eyes toward Betty Loxton. When Hartley had noted all the successful hirelings, he proclaimed the audition finished. Then with gentle glee, the old man related to the piano lady the names of those who would sing and dance. Dupré returned to the table. The stage-door keeper marshalled the beaming faces, handed them song sheets, and the piano lady struck up an arpeggio wherewith the chorus began, a burst of sound filling the cracks of the very ceiling.
Betty Loxton was about to join the unsuccessful ones leaving the Green Room when Mr. Dupré signalled to her to wait. He strolled over to her, straightened the fall of his frock coat and before he spoke, he raised his chin, and with an elegant, quick gesture, patted his henna-brown hair.
“Crabb,” he called out. “Come and take Miss Loxton to Mrs. B. in wardrobe.”
Young Crabb pulled on his cap. The pretty-faced Betty stood amazed. She held her mouth open at the master’s command and did not look him in the eye as Dupré slowly walked around her, his hand on his chin, his eyes hawk-like in their peering at her torso, her ivory-coloured skin. His eyes went up and down her figure a second time; his hand brushed back a loose lock on her forehead.
“Take off your bonnet, dear miss,” said Dupré. Betty smiled and undid the frayed ribbons. Her hair fell out in a tumble. “Very nice,” said Dupré. “You like the theatre, do you?”
Betty curtsied. “I do, your grace. I am not afraid of being on the board. I have a full voice.”
“So I heard this afternoon. But for the part I have for you, you must be very brave.”
“Why so, sire?”
Betty’s tight mouth betrayed her rising fear of Dupré’s offer, and so acute were her trembling hands that young Crabb wanted to take hold of them and tenderly stroke them.
“Can you climb stairs, young miss?” asked Dupré.
“But of course, sire. I can indeed,” she boasted.
“Do you like being up high?”
“How do you mean?”
“In a tree, say, or high on a roof?”
“I never been to one or t’other, sire, but I show no fear of such, if that’s what you’re after.”
“I am, pretty miss. I shall help you, be assured.”
“Thank you, sire.”
“Why do you look so sad, pretty flower?” Dupré took hold of Betty’s hand. He held it close for a second then let it drop.
“T’is nothing, your grace.”
“I see a tear, do I?”
“No, sire. It is the dust only.”
“You are a good lass,” Dupré said. “Four shillings for your trouble. And you shall work from Boxing Night until the New Year’s Eve. Six days, plus four rehearsals. An extra shilling for a bonus, if you are on time and a good girl.”
“I am a good girl, sire. A good strong girl.”
“Yes, I can see you are,” smiled Dupré.
Crabb took hold of Betty’s hand.
“That’s it Crabb, to wardrobe. Have her measured. Then bring her up to the fly loft. And get her a harness.”
“Yes, sir. Post-haste.”
Down the stairs to the costume room, Betty stopped Crabb. “Crabb is your name?”
“Reggie, call-boy. I am but fourteen.”
“So you are, sweet boy. I am the same year as you.”
“Careful, Betty. These stairs are steep. Don’t tumble on your crown.”
“I am not a fool, Reggie-boy. Look.”
Betty grabbed hold of the thin banister and mounted it. She slid down fast to the wooden floor, landing with a thump. “See,” she laughed. She pulled up her skirt, tucked it, did a hand stand, kicking her legs. “I do this at the Gaff. Come along one time. Come and see me fly about.”
“I shall, miss. For sure, I shall, Miss Betty.”
* * *
One half hour later, Betty Loxton was strapped into a thick leather harness waiting in trepidation for the set-up of the flying contraption. A few moments later, Henry Robertson Dupré appeared in the fly loft. “Do not vex yourself,” she kept whispering to herself. This time you shall be brave. You shall impress the sire, show him you are strong. The stage manager blew his whistle. Mr. Dupré raised up his head to watch. Two pulleys attached to a metal track clicked and rattled their way toward Betty. The pulleys held two wires and clips, and its weight was counterbalanced in the offstage by a huge sandbag. Young Crabb stood beside Betty, holding her hand. She shut her eyes. The stage manager approached her and attached the wires to the back of her harness. “Ready then,” he shouted to his men below and blew two short blasts.
“Careful,” advised Mr. Dupré. “Now slowly let her go down and track across the entire width of the stage and then back up, over on stage right. Give her flight a slight wave action.”
The stage manager blew his whistle two more times, and the men below began cranking a drum wheel while pulling on a large rope. Above Betty, another man leaned over a narrow bridge and guided the pulleys. With a slight tug at her body, Betty Loxton rose into the air. The wires jiggled, but she was strong enough and the machine so balanced that she moved as lightly as a bit of fluff. Her feet dangled. She clenched her teeth, and when she began to slowly descend, she suddenly smiled and began to wave her arms. “I’m not afraid, sire. Look, you see,” she yelled back to Mr. Dupré.
“Point your toes, Betty miss,” Dupré shouted.
Betty’s young body floated down into the open space of the stage between the tall flats set for the evening’s farce, the wires stalwart in their bearing. From the sidelines, she looked delicate, lighter than down, her body swaying gently as the wires carried her sideways, then up through the dust-motes and the flickering yellow pall from the battens of gaslight. Her flying movement was so breezy, in fact, that Dupré himself broke into applause. “Well done. Smooth as a lark on the wing.”
Up she came to the fly loft soon after, her body more relaxed. Young Crabb bolted along the loft bridge to greet her on the far side of the stage.
“My good girl, you have inspired me,” cried Dupré dashing up to her. From the way his hands came out to her it seemed Mr. Dupré wanted to take young Betty in his arms and express his appreciation and his affection for her first attempt. “This waif shall play a fairy in the last two scenes, a muse to Mr. Weston’s brooding beast,” Dupré announced to the stage manager and his crew, his voice jubilant.
“As you see fit, sir,” obeyed the stage manager, his usual huffing and puffing under every syllable. “Crabb!” Henry shouted. “Tell young Betty to come to me at the run-through.”
Dupré pulled down the corners of his waistcoat. He would order a late supper for the two of them. A quick supper. Lovely young Betty would take a bath beforehand, then Mrs. B. could bring her upstairs to the attic office, the one with the desk, the French mirror and the damask-covered chaise longue. Henry knew he must write her part by midnight, driven by his inspiration to see her again. He must finish it and send it out to the copyist before dawn.
Leaving the fly loft, he ran down four flights of stairs and practically skipped with joy into the rehearsal hall, where the cast for the pantomime was gathered for the first “walk-through” of all t
he speaking and the action. As Henry arrived, flushed with excitement, he saw Miss Root in her large skirt and wig looking somewhat fatigued and languid in her stance.
“Are you not feeling better, Miss Root?” he enquired, not really hearing her mumbled response.
The stage-door keeper came up to him and tapped Henry on the shoulder, prompting him to jump back. “I ask you, Hartley, not to startle me like that.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I have a delay, sir.”
“A delay? Whatever do you mean?”
“Mr. Weston has sent word. Illness, sir, has delayed his coming to the rehearsal.”
“His own or that of his tiresome sister?”
“He did not say, sir.”
“No, I am certain he did not. We have but a half hour to run through before the dinner break. Kindly begin without him then. Post-haste, sir, if you can manage it.”
“At once, Mr. Dupré.”
The actors took their places where the floor was marked with lines and squares drawn in chalk. Henry and the dancing master read out the moves from the promptbook, the actors and chorus began reading lines from their folios and moving according to the shouted directions of Henry and his assistant.
“Faster, faster,” Henry shouted at the stumbling daughters of the count. Miss Root sang her first song off key, and Henry delighted in his chance to admonish her. “It was only a D-flat, Henry,” she snapped at him, and sang the song again in perfect pitch. The dancing master was in the middle of revising steps for the peasant chorus when Betty Loxton entered the room and took a seat by the door. Following close behind her stumbled Mr. Weston. The great actor’s face was white as snow; his hat was off, and his overcoat with the fur collar was unbuttoned. The room came to a halt. Henry stood up from his chair, his hands on his hips.
“Mr. Weston, I must congratulate you. You not only have found us—finally—but you have managed to put on the finest display of a tipsy Irishman west of the Lyceum. Unfortunately, Mr. Weston, you are playing a noble beast this season, not a drunk.”
Mr. Weston collided against one of the chairs. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he slurred.
The stage-door keeper dashed up to Mr. Weston. He whispered frantically into his ear. Weston shoved him aside. “Nonsense, I can perform my duties quite sufficiently.”
“Take your places again, please,” commanded Dupré. “Do hurry along, Mr. Weston.”
The chorus formed a circle; Miss Root stood with her arms at her sides; Mr. Weston took one step and fell to the floor.
“For God’s sake, Weston,” Dupré shouted amidst the gasps and astonished glares of the cast.
“Henry, he seems ill,” said Miss Root.
“Careless and mad, more likely,” retorted Dupré. “How is it possible to run the greatest theatre in London when I must contend with a leading player who comports himself no better than a gin shop fopling?”
A chill came into the air. Mr. Weston attempted to rise, yet even with the arm of Hartley to aid him, he was too dizzy to stand. “I beg…your leave,” he said. Hartley crooked his finger, and two younger men from the chorus stepped forward to lead Weston from the room.
Dupré threw his script to the floor. “Damnation,” he cried. He panned the amazed faces before him. He wanted to bark at Miss Root for defending Mr. Weston. Instead, he bent down and picked up his script and held it out from his body at an angle, suggesting to the tense onlookers that he was holding a smelly cod. “Hartley, I give you leave to continue this wretched task. Run the chorus through. You read and walk Mr. Weston’s part. I have work of a finer nature to do, upstairs. Good evening.”
On his way out, Dupré sidled over to Betty Loxton and took hold of her cold hand. He stood close to her, “Well done today, miss. You shall be rewarded. See Mrs. B. in wardrobe after your walk-through about a late supper this evening.” He touched her lightly on the cheek. The young girl curtsied, and her eyes shone. She was about to speak, but Dupré purposefully turned away, leaving her to anticipate the pleasures of the private dinner he would serve later in the evening.
* * *
A theatre manager leaving a rehearsal could consider himself negligent, but Henry Robertson Dupré did not care. He had slept little the night before, and his nerves were jangling. When he returned to his attic office, he was very much out of sorts, and he banged the door behind him. A fury erupted in him, and he kicked the chair and smashed a paperweight against the wall.
He became more agitated at his desk when his revision for the fairy scene with Betty proved to be feeble on re-reading. At the instant, he took to his chair and never once stopped moving his quill until he had scratched out all the lines and composed new ones. He rubbed his forehead as he re-wrote; he shut out any noise from the street below, forcing himself to read aloud the actions and new dialogue until they rang with his doggerel poetry, until they sounded strong enough to sway the fickle pit and galleries he had to please every night.
Of all things now, it was the spectre of failure that frightened him most. “Pull it, send it back.” Those terrible words haunted him. Many times as a young playwright he had heard them bawled from the balconies, only to discover the next morning he was without a position in the theatre. Now he was faced with Mr. Weston and his unruliness. Whatever could have possessed the man to sabotage his rehearsal in such a fashion? A piercing fear bullied its way into Henry Robertson Dupré’s conscience. And what of the matter with Cake?
“Psst,” came the voice from the open door. Henry jumped. The inkwell tipped and spread its black pool over his newly written words. “God, almighty.” Henry grabbed frantically for the blotter. Alas, his saving gesture arrived too late—the fairy vision he’d created was already drowned in India ink. He allowed himself to look back over his shoulder to the door. He was sure it was stupid Hartley, and he was ready to beat the man.
“Sire?”
Ah, Henry sighed, as his eyes welcomed the tumbled hair, the sweet smile, the little waist.
“Come in, come,” he delighted.
For an answer, Betty Loxton curtsied and dashed up to him. Without provocation, she tossed her arms up to his neck and held him. She pulled back then, her face red. “Oh, your grace, please pardon me. I am so happy. I am so grateful.” Her words floated away. In less than an eye blink, she began to weep and knelt to the floor, her hands covering her face.
“Rise, rise, sweet Betty,” Henry smiled, his hands stroking hers, his inner self now inflamed.
He held her, took in the heady perfume of her thick hair. Her shoulders were strong and muscular under her cheap clothes. “I cannot help myself, sire,” she moaned. “I am so happy.” She was like a kitten eager to lap up milk set before its starving mouth. Dupré controlled himself, treating her with some aloofness, for it was not yet time for supper or the pleasures of the chaise longue. This temptation must wait awhile before it coaxed one to succumb. Reluctantly, he led quivering Betty Loxton down the many stairs into the deep basement of the theatre. “Rest here,” he told her. He instructed the wardrobe mistress to prepare a bath and a cup of tea. Mrs. B nodded but did not look into the eyes of her employer. She hastened to take hold of Betty’s shoulders and steer her toward the hearth. Betty pulled away from Mrs. B’s embrace and ran back to Dupré, where she whispered “thank you” in his ear, her hunger for his attention forcing her to smile coyly as she returned to the arms of Mrs. B.
“I shall come later to see how you are,” Dupré said, his voice slightly higher than a whisper.
He knew he would be gentle with her, at first. He knew without turning back to watch her sit at the hearth he would relish the sound of her footsteps on the attic stairs, her footfall as enticing to him as the taste of the best brandy.
* * *
Time was pressing, even though the smells coming from the kitchen calmed Owen Endersby enough to allow him to sit down, unfold his napkin and prepare himself for his supper. The aforesaid kitchen was but a narrow cupboard with a small window, a shallow cooking hearth and
pantry cupboards. The hearth itself made him proud: in it was the latest iron invention he had purchased for his dear Harriet, a tight square box made of metal, its chimney wedged into the larger flue of the cooking fireplace. On its clanging top, one could place pots to warm, a kettle to boil; its iron belly held coals and embers in a mass of even warmth. Beyond this room, the rest of his humble flat lay in a square of small chambers—the bedroom, the narrow hall, the parlour not much wider than a refectory table, and last, as cozy as a four poster, his study, crowded by a table and a sofa. Endersby loved his flat, as it was a haven for his mind and body. Though this evening it was somewhat stifled by the heat from the cooking hearth and the pressure of a surprise his dear Harriet had prepared for him.
“Here she is,” said Harriet, entering the parlour and approaching the dining table, an awkward young woman by her side. Miss Solange appeared to be a quiet woman, never looking Endersby in the eye as she was introduced. Harriet whispered: “She comes highly recommended by Mrs. Paige, whose cousin engaged her in the summer. The cousin left for New Zealand, and poor Solange was without a position. She can cook anything, in the French manner, of course. I thought you and I needed a little change.”