Pursuit

by Felice Picano

  Soon I was left in charge of the stall while the girls went out to the streets with cones of violets and packets of pansies, and Theo Herbert took his “afternoon siesta” in the ’van.

  For close on two years I lived and worked in Covent Garden and soon had become part of their little family. Come holidays, we would hitch up to some elderly jade kept stabled not too many streets away, and we would make haste to entertain ourselves in some out-of-the-city inn in bad weather or some idyllic outdoors spot in a more clement climate. Theo-Herbert adored his daughters, who were good enough girls, I admit, but who for him walked on air like veritable fairies. Conversely, he scorned “young men,” checking my face often to see if I had yet joined that hellish crew. Fair-skinned (I have black hair) though I am, I was still fairer then, and for a long time no hint of that ever-oncoming masculine tragedy was noted, despite his close inspection.

  Slowly, and through the tattle of his fellow flower and produce vendors, I learned Andromeda Newholl was dead. She had been accosted by one of those blasted “young men” one afternoon when the girls were infants and Theo distant at work at the Garden. The scamp had fancied Andromeda and followed her home, and there he’d attacked her, had his way with her, and beat her badly when she resisted. She had lingered nigh on a week; in dying, she had broken her husband’s heart. No other woman would ever do. Yet the girls grew, and somehow they became sufficient company. But while “boys and tots and lads” might easily gambol underfoot the Familia Newholl, “young men” like the criminal who had done in his wife and never been caught were not at all welcome. So, unless I might reverse Time itself, my days in this Floral Arcadia were numbered.

  Those days came to a conclusion somewhat earlier than I anticipated, due to an incident regarding an elderly gentleman named Mr. Sloat. Sloat was an incompletely retired clerk, part-time supervisor over another dozen clerks in some nearby establishment. He was a tall, fatuous fellow, pear shaped, with a handsome if awfully narrow head above his usually bleached to blinding white neck cloth and a general decrease in cleanliness from the top down: a spotted lower coat, questionable trousers, with tattered gaiters barely still wrapped about his completely discreditable footwear. Sloat arrived three times a week between three and five of an afternoon. He invariably bought the same bouquet composed of gilly flowers, white stock, and to balance their economical cost, one gorgeous blossom, whether an especially large or fragrant red rose, a multi-blossomed tiger lily, or Harlequin tulip of superb size and colouring. His taste was by then so well established that Theo-Herbert, unpacking our flowers early each morn, would comment, “Now here’s a centre bloom for Sloat.”

  As invariably as he arrived, so did Mr. Sloat short-change the girls should Theo-Herbert not be at the stall or if he were loudly asleep. He did this in a most annoying manner, giving Thalia, say, a sovereign for a large armful of flowers costing three shillings, and when she had given him the correct change, pointing out that she was a thruppence short. Embarrassed, she would add in the dull gleaming copper coin and curtsy, and Sloat would go off whistling, no doubt content with the universe now that he had cheated a hapless child out of three pennies.

  Not only had he taken advantage of his age, size, and his position, he had done so very arrogantly, chiding the girl for her stupidity and barely accepting her heartfelt apologies. I burned witnessing it.

  But there came an afternoon—Sloat always arrived after luncheon—when neither Theogones nor his daughters were at the stall but only myself. Sloat had seen me around enough of the time to not be put out by me at once. Again he gathered his bouquet, this time with a large pale blue iris as centrepiece. He handed me a sovereign, only to be met with my quick response. “Sorry, guv. No change of coin today. Mister Herbert ’as took it with ’im.”

  “Took it with him?” Sloat asked, as though I told him he’d turned water into wine.

  “So he has,” I said, holding a grip on the floral bunch he wanted. “Mrs. Simon would give ye change, I don’t doubt.” I nodded in the direction of the woman at the next stall.

  “Mrs. Simon?” asked Sloat, with such astonishment that I might have recommended Mrs. Beelzebub to him.

  “’Fraid I mustn’t leave the stall. Orders. Sorry, guv.”

  Well, you could have knocked Mr. Sloat over upon his very wide, soiled, derrière. Nevertheless, he went to her and obtained the change. We counted out the proper sum together, I quite loudly.

  “Isn’t it thruppence over?” he said.

  “Why not take it back,” said I, reasonably enough, handing it all back to him, “and we shall count it out again to be certain?”

  He did so and of course he counted out and gave me the correct amount. With a very poor grace, I must say. Instead of his usual satisfaction, he walked away with a very grim down-turned mouth.

  When Mr. Sloat did not appear the following day to take the large scarlet carnation Theogones had set aside for him, Theo-Herbert wondered aloud where he was. None of us had seen him. When Sloat didn’t come a second day, I, of course, began to wonder. He did come a third day, but when he saw I was alone at the stall, he promptly turned around and took himself off.

  Theo was just then awakening from his post-prandial nap and leapt after him. He cajoled Sloat back to the stall, waited on him personally, and sold him a gorgeous “black” tulip—actually night-time purple. Some time later that afternoon, he wondered at Sloat not appearing and then going away, and looked at me questioningly. I felt obliged to explain to him what I had done to keep Sloat from cheating me and why I had done so. I naïvely assumed Newholl would commend me upon my cleverness. Instead, he berated me quite loudly enough so a half dozen nearby flower and produce stalls could not have but heard his words.

  Embarrassed and angry, I then in equally loud tones asked why it was that Theogones put up with Sloat humiliating his daughters so often.

  “For the sake of his trade,” said he. “Which is five days per week. In this way do I counteract his short-changing the girls.”

  But only by having the girls be told they were dolts.

  “Girls is dolts,” said Theo. “They can’t count nor read and write like you nor I. What care you anyway how my daughters are humbled?”

  I had no answer for that but to tell him I would no longer be party to such disgraceful behaviour, constant customer or not.

  “Then find yerself another stall to sell at. And another crib to sleep in,” he said, in equally affronted tones. “If yer so high and mighty.”

  For the next month or so, I did exactly that, filling in for other stalls’ lads, or for their owners at the stalls during their lunch times or nap times. After such a long time there, I was, after all, familiar to all inside the Garden, and my reputation was fair enough. I had enough credit that I might have even opened my own stall, as Mrs. Simon urged me, looking to expand.

  She also explained to me the real problem. “The gulls is growin’ to become womens,” said she. “And ye yerself, growin’ to become a young man. He canna abide such.”

  So, while I worked enough to feed myself, more often I moped about the Garden from stall to wall, languishing upon kerb stone to slatted crate, fitted out with a slim volume of verse in my hand, fantastical as a Keats, languid as a Shelley.

  Feigning the greatest ennui, in truth, I soon found distraction enough. For a theatrical troupe suddenly arrived unannounced in Covent Garden late one breezy afternoon when all of us were going starkers chasing after our bonnets, hats, cash boxes, and stray stalks of airborne gladiolus.

  The actors clangorously trundled into the square within two large, overblown, colourful, horse-drawn caravans, and immediately camped at the far north-eastern corner, where infrequent “entertainment” customarily set up stage.

  The latter had, during my time there so far, constituted a wagon full of cheerless, fly-blown marionettes in so-called dramatizations of old legends that even Zoe Newholl disdained as puerile. I also recall an ancient Punch and Judy show, from somewhere in Essex, las
t costumed and painted up in the time of King George Second. Most recently, we’d been treated to a family dance company from Scotland purporting to be “Hebrides-bred and authentikal,” of which the less said about it, the better for any future intercourse with our northern neighbour.

  Monsieur Guillaume Darrot and The Invincible Theatre, read the man-sized placards of the new troupe, standing on either side of the little stage that was quickly erected between ends of two high-sided caravans parked six yards apart in the corner. Handbills distributed by myself, as a hired lad, named the individuals of the company, which besides M. Darrot included Mademoiselle Suzette Darrot, Mademoiselle Antoinette Genre, M. De Sang-Pur—doubtless the large, bearded, bald-headed fellow I had noted moving large objects about so much—and a “Grande-Madame de St. Clement-En-Hors-de-Combat,” whom we were assured would play roles deemed “Domestic, Deistic, and Outlandish.”

  I laughed as hard as the other flower vendors, fruiterers and marrow-sellers, reading aloud for them this piece of Frenchified gallimaufry. Even so, two nights later, I joined an audience of several score, requiting my ha’pence for the troupe’s first performance: The Most Despicable and Horrible Tragedy of the Tyrone Family of —— County, Ireland—after a tale written by that estimable Mr. Joseph Bodin de Sheridan De Le Fanu. And, like the other three score in the audience, I was terrified, frightened, and moved. Moved so much, in fact, that four days later and after having seen every one of their performances, I resigned the Covent Garden, flower-selling, and the Hellenically inclined Newholl family forever, and I joined The Invincible Theatre troupe.

  There I would receive what might have been the first great polish to my education.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  M. Darrot turned out to be an individual no more exotic than a Mr. William Darrow, or Billy-Boy Dee, as his sire, another member of the troupe, one Jonathan Darrow, Mr. Pure Blood, or De Sang-Pur, called him. For all his age and his considerable airs, Darrow the Elder was no more well-born than your humble servant and hailed from some inconsequential townlet in Surrey.

  And the purity of his blood, if it ever existed, must do daily battle with prodigious amounts of gin and usquebaugh to discover which liquid would prevail.

  Still, the old reprobate was docile and had been for many long moons an actor with other troupes, including what remained of The King’s Men during the realm of the last Regent, and so he had memorized his acting parts, or at any rate had gotten several resonantly long speeches by heart.

  It was those speeches that Darrow the Younger had pilfered, and around them that he had since begun to scribble his own plays, far more popular adaptations of our then-contemporary literature as found in various three-volume novels and periodicals, along with those foreign dramas he happened upon and then lifted wholesale. Add to those two or three expurgations of Mr. Shakespeare filled with blood, thunder, ghosts, and revenge, and there you have the troupe’s entire repertoire.

  You may then easily guess that the great female dramaturge of the company, Mademoiselle Suzanne Darrot, was, in fact, Susie Darrow née Semple, wife to Billy-Boy. And Mademoiselle Antoinette Genre was, in truth, her niece by blood, a Miss Amy Green. As for the fifth member of the company, it would be many months before I uncovered that remarkable personage’s complete identity and rather odd verity.

  Meanwhile during their short engagement at the Covent Garden’s out of doors corner, I had progressed with The Invincibles from being a mere set-up helper, to a placard boy, and on to becoming a constant “stage-handy lad,” assisting Billy in setting up the changes of scenery. These commonly consisted of two parts: a painted background or, as they called it, “rear scrim,” and a variety of deal or other lightweight wood furniture upon which the actors would perch and lean for verisimilitude, though few might actually hold the full weight of the somewhat rotund Darrow Elder for longish periods of time. I also drew the curtains to open and close the show as well as to register the so-called Entr’actes.

  An immediate fascination with their art attracted me into the circle of The Invincible Theatre. Growing knowledge and increasing appreciation of their craft and all it comprised, indeed required, drew me even more tightly into their tiny realm. Thence, a kind of juvenile passion with those two lovely, and that one mysterious, female enmeshed me ever more.

  Remember that I was at this time in that mid-age between boy and man that my former employer, Theogones, so abhorred. But I must admit that finally it was my total fixation upon Billy Darrow that at last folded me into the troupe’s most intimate circle, for while I had before idolised members of the female sex, for the first time in my life, I found a male worthy of my uttermost infatuation.

  Was he handsome, then, this leading actor, you will ask? Of course he was. He was a leading man of an acting troupe, after all. But then again, feature by feature, he was not especially remarkable. He had learned through stage makeup to over-benefit the advantages of his better facial features. His fine, glittering black eyes he emphasized by application of dark paint to his eyebrows and by thickening to ebony his eyelashes. His nose I knew for a fact at close sight to be slightly bent to the left. No matter, he painted a straight line down to its tip despite the bone and shaded it from either side, and it appeared ferrule-straight.

  He re-limned and then daubed into the new outline his upper lip so it might be as voluptuous as its mate. He oh so softly rouged his cheekbones so they shone not quite so high, to make himself more cherubic for younger roles. Even so, later on, when a play-described “brilliant beau” was required for a walk-on role, Billy was the first to toss my own self, clad in gilt velvet with silver frogging, onto that never-very-steady movable stage in lieu of himself for the audience to ooh and aah over. True, his figure was slim and long, but almost, he believed, simian, with his somewhat apelike long arms and large hands. His posture was never quite Royal, unless it must be for a role. No, he was ever an indifferent King, preferring that his Elder or even the mysterious and multi-named fifth member take over those majestic roles when they were of a short duration.

  As compensation, Billy was, however, most lithe, most flexible, and most assuredly athletic. He could juggle, he could somersault, he could leap high enough to make audiences gasp, and he would then just barely alight, one shaky foot atop a single shivering beam, his entire body vibrating as though he would topple over, and yet hold his ground steady, to everyone’s amazed relief.

  In short, he could, with no trouble at all, incur every viewer’s eye by a score of differing means and hold it just as long as he wished. If his voice was nothing especial, a fair tenor, he could sing several airs of Mr. Handel and Herr Mozart with perfect tone and pitch, and he would leave a tear in your eye and a throb in your breast. But for the grand dramatic speeches, he must drag in that old sot, his sire, whose resounding baritone was a natal gift. So, as the lad Billy-Boy had watched his pater to learn, so watched I him every moment onstage, whether in rehearsal or “on show,” to educate myself into what turned out to be an only middling grasp of the actor’s craft.

  And if Billy Darrow was admirable, he was even more so when he had someone to admire him. By this tenth year of The Invincible Theatre’s existence, that meant no one other than myself. His wife was by then quite inured; his father was, as always, uninterested; and who knew what the fifth member thought, as we only heard uttered speech onstage. Even Billy’s niece by marriage, his last conquest before me, was looking about for someone else to engage her esteem.

  It was she, Miss Amy, who, three months into my employment with the troupe, made the discovery that despite all my larking about London town, among some of its most unsavoury haunts and disreputable gutters, that for sensual experience, at nearly twelve years of age, I was still “pure as the driven snow.”

  We had left London some weeks past and only just set up stage in the large, second common green of Sheffield town, and I had just returned from depositing our placards about those shop fronts that would countenance our adverts in their windows, wh
en she faced me down. Her arms were akimbo, her chestnut hair all flying about, her cheeks reddened from proximity to the boiling hot water. In short, she looked quite notably natural for once and, if I must say so, quite lovely, too. The scene was the outdoor fire where she and her aunt were laundering the troupe’s clothing in preparation for the week to come. By this time, I had come into a second set of shirt and trowsers, and so had given in my originals for cleansing.

  “What’s this, then?” she asked pointing to a stain no more remarkable to my eye than any other, except perhaps its location, slightly above the Y of my trowser legs. As I looked, she looked me in the eye and said, “Jizz, is what. Look, Ess, how he does stain himself at night.”

  I was unaware of staining myself at night or any other time and said so, unaware they were japing with me, until Mrs. Darrow asked, “Have you then no dreams at all, a lad your age, of ladies fair?” Upon which I blushed to recall one such dream about herself.

  She laughed, but quickly enough the two of them calculated, and then said, “Haven’t you ever…with a lass or lady?” And what was I to say? I turned and fled, murmuring some work that must be attended to immediately.

  That night, my idol roused himself from his conjugal bed within caravan number one and came to where I had cobbled together my own more makeshift sleeping quarters on the street beneath caravan number two.

  “Come, my love,” he said, for that was how Billy spoke to all of us, my love, my darling, my sweetheart. “Come up to bed with Susie and me.”

  I was, to say the truth, amazed, for the cobblestones were especially iron-hard with ice that night with autumn coming on, despite my many efforts to disguise them with slats and cloths. Any softer lie-down would be preferable.