The Illumination of Ursula Flight

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by Anna-Marie Crowhurst


  ‘That is where I become a playwright, Parry. And I hope to end it with applause.’

  GOOD LUCK CHARMS FOR

  OPENING NIGHT

  A rabbit’s-foot brooch pinned to my shoulder

  A silver horseshoe on a chain

  My beloved old writing book (in my pocket)

  A note from all the company

  A posy made up by Bunty with a four-leaf clover

  A lock of my sweet daughter’s hair, tied with a sea-green ribbon and pressed into my bosom – for now all of this is for her, and her alone.

  The smell of the hair irons roused me out of my reverie. I had been thinking on the play’s epilogue, which, though it was the opening night, I was still making notes on in my script book, my hands splotched over with ink.

  ‘Curses, I have frizzed it again,’ said Thruckle, setting the instrument back on the grate. ‘They will never think me a just-betrothed young maid at this rate.’

  ‘I do not think it matters,’ I said soothingly, ‘for the words are the thing, and you know them off by heart. Here, I have made some changes to the final line; do you think you can get this pat in an hour?’

  ‘Well, I will have to, I suppose,’ she said, snatching the paper from me.

  Parrykin came in then, with a scarlet face. ‘’Tis filling up, my dears, filling up! At this rate we will have a full house. ’Tis no wonder, for I have had the playbills plastered everywhere from Whitechapel to Whitefriars.’

  ‘I expect they have all come to gawp at a lady playwright,’ said Thruckle. ‘For the bruits about town are that she is a famous whore, or else the runaway wife of a duke, or a nun come from a Flemish convent, or all of them put together.’

  I laughed at this. ‘How chagrined they will be to see it is only I. But I hope they may laugh at my trials and tribulations, for even I can see the humour in them now.’

  The sounds of the audience began to float backstage. I thought of all the rows of eyes that would be upon my play, and all the mouths that would chatter of it afterwards, and I began to feel the clammy sensation that used to grip me before I went on the stage to act. My throat was swollen and dry and I felt a swirling in my belly that had not been helped by the posset I had swallowed, made up by Bunty and with rather too much rum. I smoothed out my skirts. I was thankful that I had a new gown, and had sent for a French hair-dresser, who had primped me and powdered me where my shaking hands could not.

  The boy appeared.

  ‘Note for you, Mrs Bearwood – ’scuse me – Mrs Flight, from a gentleman. Shall I put it with the others or do you want it now?’

  ‘I will read it, Dennis,’ I said, taking it from it and breaking off the wax.

  DEAREST,

  Forgive me, my Ursula, but I could not keep away, though I tried.

  I will come to you in the ’Tiring Room after the performance, if you will see me. I am so full of wonder and joy that you have written your story at last, as I always knew you would.

  YOUR UNDESERVING & MOST CONTRITE,

  SAMUEL.

  XVII

  CELEBRATION

  In which the first night of my very own play unfolds

  How do I begin to describe my feelings as the curtain went up on the first night of the first play I had authored, under my very own name of Ursula Flight? It was a thing that I had been writing for so many years, from a child to a woman, not knowing what it would be; only that as I scratched each piece of me painstakingly onto the page, I had been comforted and protected by the familiar place that was my imagination. How strange it was now to hear those words – words that I had heard spoken in life – now changed as I heard them in the mouths of the company playing their parts. I chuckled as Mr Manners strode about the stage in a dull brown suit as Tyringham, and smiled with the audience as I saw Mrs Thruckle, without her wig and patches, sit by the side of Parrykin, who played my father, and conjugate her Latin verbs.

  My whole body felt tight with the tension of not knowing how my tale would be received, and wishing to better gauge the reaction of the audience, I crept up to a box and peeked through the curtain, scanning the rows in the hope of a glimpse of my mother or Catherine or Percival or even Reginald, for I had cherished the hope that if my mother could not see her way past my shame, then one of my siblings, younger and more sympathetic to the age we lived in, might give in to their curiosity to find out what their elder sister had become. But if one of them was there, I did not spy them. Leaning against the side of the box, concealed by the blue velvet back curtain, I gave myself over to a daydream of my family and I come together again, my brothers now tall and broad, Catherine pretty – much prettier than I – and my mother’s arms stretched out to pull me to her. I felt suddenly the acute pain of thinking that my mother should never see my daughter, or advise me on the tribulations of motherhood I knew were to come, and I felt a wave of sorrow rise up and threaten to engulf me.

  The laughter of the audience pulled me back to where I was as Mrs Careby, as Sibeliah, spake her lines in a high, faltering way which had the flavour, if not the exact timbre, of the original. I pointed my face up towards the gallery to see if the ’prentices and wenches laughed as much as the citizens. Some did, some were engaged in chatter and flirtation, but there was one man who stood, his face mostly obscured by a cloak. I peered at him briefly, mildly curious as to what he was about and why he came to the playhouse, when he turned his head towards me – perhaps some movement of the audience had caught his attention – and I could see his face at last. Pale, bulbous of forehead, the weak chin, the heavy top lip with its black stripe of moustache. Tyringham, said my mind, though I did not want it to be so. My lost husband, Tyringham. Had he come to claim me back once more?

  Though I knew he could not hurt me now, I found that I was tremoring about the hands, and shrank back into my curtain, for fear that he had glimpsed me (how foolish this instinct was, now I think of it, when my name was writ large on every playbill and poster, and I was on the stage too, in every word of the play), but he had not spied me – his attention now was on the stage. He did not laugh with the audience, as the man playing him sat in bed beside the woman playing me, but looked much surprised that there was humour in what was depicted there, and drooped his head, as if in thought. Feeling suddenly strange, I drew myself back in the curtain and slipped back down to the ’Tiring Room, where I might be alone and comfort myself with a cordial. The sounds of catcalls from the audience seeped through the walls as I sipped at my drink and thought of how I had come to this.

  Presently, Parrykin pushed his way in, pulling off his wig and throwing it on the trunk.

  ‘Oh well, it cannot be helped,’ he said, looking very down in the mouth, and avoiding my eye. ‘You tried your best, of that I am sure. They are booing out there, and a rotten cabbage has just landed on Mrs Careby’s hat.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said falteringly, feeling my heart drop to my stomach. My worst fears had been realized. The play was not a good one and my daughter’s future was no longer secured.

  Just then Manners rushed in between scenes. ‘Here she is, here she is!’ he said, catching me up and leading me in a sort of caper, which did not suit my mood and made me stumble and fall against the prop cupboard. ‘Did you see them all laughing, and crying some?’ he said, seeming not to take in my melancholy.

  I looked at him in confusion.

  ‘Ah, you have ruined my joke, Manners,’ said Parrykin, swatting at him. ‘But p’raps it is best, for I could not keep it up.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ I said. ‘I beg you – is it good or is it bad? I feel quite sick to my stomach.’

  ‘I was joshing you, my dear,’ said Parry, his expression now completely changed from the melancholic one it was before. ‘Forgive me. I shall put it plainly: the play is a success! As a playwright myself of some years’ standing, believe me I know the strangeness of this – indeed ’tis a surprise to me, in truth, for I thought your play good but—’ He broke off. ‘Are you not content?’


  I looked up at him. ‘Oh aye, I am. I just... cannot take it in.’ I found that I was welling up.

  The door swung open then and the boy called, ‘Final dance and bows please, ladies and gents. Places for the bows.’

  Mr Manners caught up my hand and pulled me with him, down the short passage to the side of the stage, with Parrykin close on our heels. In a sudden giddy spurt of joy, I went on with the company to join them in their closing ballet, they all a-smiles, and bowing before me. Even before the musicians were done, the sound of applause began to rise up from all of those in front of us. There was whistling too, and cries that I could not make out, and the stamping of feet.

  The company took two bows, and then came cries of ‘Author! Author!’ taken up by so many voices I felt quite shy, but though I protested, Manners and Careby came and brought me onto the stage and stood back for me to take my own bow, and began clapping for me themselves. I made my curtsey as elegantly as I could muster, and only a very little shyly, and held my hand out to the company and to the musicians, but the clapping did not let up, but grew louder, and then the people began to rise from their seats, and I began to laugh despite myself at the clamour of the people who had liked my play.

  Manners came and stood beside me as I gazed in wonder at the audience, who all now stood to applaud me.

  ‘I cannot believe it,’ I whispered.

  Manners laughed himself and squeezed my arm. ‘It’s the women.’

  ‘Thruckle and Careby?’ I said.

  ‘Nay, nay,’ he said, gesturing out towards the rows of people, who still did not quieten. ‘Look who it is that clap you the loudest and scream out for more! ’Tis the women, Urse. ’Tis they who call out and they who jump up from their seats to applaud. You have put them on the stage, Ursula. You have shown their plight as daughters and wives and mothers. You have told their story. And they love you for it.’

  And it was then that, finally, I wept.

  My play was a resounding, uproarious, undisputed success! Parrykin went about saying that it would make us all rich, while Thruckle and Careby found themselves admitting that they never had heard such a clamour and ’twas plain there was a need for plays with many female parts, with pretty actresses to play them. I cannot remember much of what passed after I had taken my bows and retreated once again to the ’Tiring Room – there were many people come to congratulate us all, and there was wine, and a jig, and many posies come for me from admirers, and Parrykin declared that I was his discovery and he had known all along that I should be a great playwright, only being shy, I had taken much persuading. And then I remembered that Samuel had said he would come. I looked up from where I sat, wedged between two ladies on the costume chest, feeling suddenly strange at the thought of he who had been my love. I pushed my way through the throng to Bunty, who stood in the passageway, guarding the door like a lioness.

  ‘Away now, gents,’ she was saying to two fops who seemed the worse for drink. ‘For actresses or nay, they is ladies and will not appreciate such language, and neither, I must say, do I.’

  ‘Did a man come for me, Bunty? Tall, with brown eyes of a wicked sort?’

  ‘There’s many men who’ve come for you, and many have been sent away with a thick ear for their pains.’

  ‘But this one in particular said he would call – he might have said his name was Hanbury.’

  ‘Now then, half a tick,’ said Mrs Bunty, eyeing me. ‘There was one who was ’ere who was tall and brown and very handsome in the eyes, now I think ’pon it.’

  ‘Where is he, Bunty?’ I said, looking about me. ‘Did he leave?’

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘He could not tarry and since he could not get to see you privately, he said he had changed his mind about seeing you at all. Very strange and dithery a fellow he was.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘No message then?’

  ‘Well, he said: “Tell her I liked the play – very much.” And he said: “Tell her I wholeheartedly beg her forgiveness – for everything.”’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ I said.

  ‘Who was it,’ said Bunty. ‘A sweetheart? Or a husband?’

  ‘Nay, nay, just someone I used to know.’

  I went back inside the room.

  ‘Now, who will give me wine?’ I cried.

  They cheered.

  XVIII

  JUBILATION

  In which I enjoy a sunny afternoon

  I sat under the shade of a great oak tree, the whisper of a breeze lifting the leaves of its branches and letting them fall again. I was pleased that my daughter was growing strong in the country away from the dirt and disease of the city. Waltham Stow was a godly place of less than two hundred dwellings, most of them farms and manors, which sat aside a great forest and banked by the wending River Lea, which brought fresh water and fish to its villagers. The grasses grew high all around in the meadow where I had stolen away to be with my child, for it was my visiting day, and all was bright to me. Though it was not yet May, the weather was fine and warm, and I had taken off my shoes. My Cassie lay on a blanket beside me, freed rebelliously from her bonnet and shawl as soon as I had carried her from Mrs Fisher’s cottage.

  My daughter had grown fat in the seven months since her birth and I watched as her chubby little hands grasped at the sky, stroked the frosting of light down on the top of her scalp. I tickled the pudgy creases of her knees, her skin feather-light under my fingers. She kicked. I kissed her nose and chanted the song of nonsense noises that was our private language. She giggled. I shook my face in front of her and watched her bright brown eyes dart about in wonder – Samuel’s eyes. I was glad that she had this of him, though she had nothing else. I had not asked for it. He did not know of the child we had created, and I would not tell him. I did not need him now.

  I picked up my script book again and looked at it. The page was riven all over with crossings out, and blobs of ink. Parrykin had got hold of it and scribbled prop directions down one of the spines.

  A paper fell out of my book.

  March, 1684

  Dear Sister,

  I am thankful you have written to me, for I did not have your address, and thought, along with Mother, that you might be dead, or gone to a convent in Flanders. I am glad to hear that it is not so.

  I am also happy to hear that you are a lady playwright, though I confess I do not know much about the theatre, my reading being not what it could be – you shall tell that from my poor hand, I think, and by the shortness of this letter, which has cost me some labour.

  I told Mary you had written and I am to write this from her:

  ‘I miss you my Ursula and send kisses to you, from me and my husband Ben and my two babbies. I have wondered all this time how you did and wished that you were happy. If you will write to me at The Cottage by the Chestnut, Little Oakham, I will get someone to read it for me, and write by return, Your Mary.’

  Mary has looked after me, did you know that? Mother does not know I am writing, by the by...

  Yes, as you ask, in a few years I shall be old enough to be promised to a man (I am ten! Which means you are nineteen!!!), but I do not think Mother would want me to leave her for a long while yet, not until I am grown up. She was so very ill after you had gone, you see – did you know? She spent my whole childhood abed it seems, though I was too little then to know about it. I only knew that the house was always dark and there was no laughter in it. But perhaps you will come back to us, and there will be, again.

  Your loving sister,

  Catherine

  I put the book down and folded the paper inside. The words weren’t coming today, though I had promised Parrykin a draft of my new play in but a week hence. I would have to stay up all night to finish it, but it would not do me any harm. The Illumination of Ursula Flight had been a success, still running; and with the King’s Men snapping at my heels to write for them, Parrykin had had no choice but to pay me handsomely for it. So I had a fine set of rooms at Charing, and two servants now, who did the wo
rk of the house and prepared my meals, for which I blessed myself every day. I had a flirtation with Mr Manners and letters and posies from gallants still, and occasionally took my pleasure with them when I had the mind, but I did not fall in love with them, knowing my independence a thing too precious to give to just any man.

  The country smells of earth and grass and meadowflowers were all around us, and I felt lazy with the first good heat of the year. I let my hands drift across the grass, looking out beyond the field to the trees whose bright green leaves rippled in the gentle breeze. A flock of swallows rose up from the thicket and wheeled in formation overhead and out of sight. The sun dappled across the folds of my baby’s fat legs. I lay back onto the grass beside her and touched the wispy top of her head, feeling the cool of the earth as it pressed against my back through my gown. I looked up at the sky, bright blue between the tree branches. My daughter chuckled at the light glinting on her face and her little voice mingled with the cries of the birds. An idea for a play began to float into my mind. There would be a dashing heroine. And a journey. I would write it all down the very instant I returned home. I sighed. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell began to ring.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel was begun (and mostly written) whilst I was on the MA Creative Writing at Bath Spa and I am hugely grateful for the time, space and structure the course gave me to write, as well as the ancient splendour and shadowy corners of the campus at Corsham Court, Wiltshire, which proved ideal on-the-job inspiration for Tyringham’s Turvey Hall.

  So many professors at Bath Spa offered their support, encouragement and criticism. The largest part of my gratitude must go to my inspirational supervisor Tessa Hadley, for her ideas, understanding, advice and incitements to ‘make better’ – I am forever in her debt. Thanks also to Nathan Filer, Kylie Fitzpatrick, Richard Kerridge and Philip Hensher for their encouragement and support. For their generous critiquing, I especially send thanks to my fellow students, in particular Deb McCormick, Zoe Somerville and Molly Aitken.

 

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