Pursuit

by Felice Picano

  No sooner had we crept into the caravan and I was at the edge of the bed, viewing by faint candlelight Mrs. Darrow herself, all pink skinned, wrapped in warm covers atop softer pillows, than from behind, I felt his hands upon me. Before I knew what he was about, he’d stripped off my trowsers and shirt and pushed me atop her. From there, she took over, and any questions I may have uttered were stilled by first her and then him. Soon were we all three as Nature made us, and almost as quickly was I between her large soft breasts, being fondled and kissed, manipulated and managed from in front and in back by one and the other simultaneously, until I had found a wet harbour below and pushed to it. I found a rhythm and soon began to gasp. What heaven! Twice more did I consort with the distaff, while the husband consorted with the lady from behind, and alternately encouraged me with many caresses and lewd remonstrations. Through it all, I encountered and experienced so many differing sensations and emotions, that when it was all over, and the three of us were at last spent to our utmost, I lay between them both, and murmured my double adoration, before I collapsed into utter debilitation.

  Once having tasted such delights, how then was I to be denied? I was not. From then on, for months on end, I bedded with my master and my mistress. True it was that the lady tired of our frolicks earlier some nights than the fellow did, and she would fall asleep, leaving Darrow to divert me. Increasingly as I appeared, I would in vain seek her, and be told she was sharing Amy’s bed that night. Or more simply, “Getting her much-needed sleep, for she worked hard today, two shows and three parts, and she knows she’ll get little enough sleep with you about.” This was said sternly, just before he kissed my lips and rifled my undergarments with his monkey-quick hands.

  In vain did I attempt to draw Miss Amy into our nocturnal diversions. “Leave her be, the poor thing,” Susie would say. “Haven’t she enough of menfolk during the day?” This latter was not so much directed at myself, who outside of the bed at caravan one remained as shy and diffident as before. Nor did it refer to our leader, much as I would come upon him all unawares staring at the lass when she knew not he was about, and he surely appeared to have more than theatrical ambitions upon his mind.

  No, but it did allude to Mlle. Genre’s slow but certain new appearance, her growth, both physical and dramatic, lending her far greater stature and her experience, providing greater repute, so that when his wife complained of too much labour, our Billy Boy simply transferred the roles to his niece. Amy took them on with a loud enough grumble and a demand for “more meat and less gristle,” but despite these noises, in truth she played the new parts joyfully and acquitted herself very well indeed. So well, in fact, that she acquired admirers by the by. Indeed, by the time we had arrived as far as Nottingham Shire, Mlle. Genre could rely upon several gentlemen’s carriages to be parked just outside the circle that comprised our audience, the owners seated upon fold-out seat contraptions prepared by their valets or drivers, near enough to the stage where they might admire Amy from closer quarters—an advantage for which Darrow charged a half shilling per head. I would not have been amazed to have closed down in one town and set up for travel to another and seen our little tripartite retinue followed by another entire and quite longer cortege of Amy’s guest-admirers.

  “They used to follow me so,” Susie whimpered very early one morning, when we three had shared a bed together again. The back curtains of the ’van formed a little V out of which I could see the pre-dawn constellation Cassiopeia clearly against the cobalt night.

  Her husband soothed her, holding her tight about as she sobbed on. “Even more admirers than she. Even higher born. Do you remember, Billy?” He did remember, loyal mate that he was, and he said so. They reminisced about Lord This and Baron That until she was mollified a bit, at which she caught sight of me and declared, “Does it never go down? I ask you, truly. Never? Ah, well, at least one handsome lad admires me.” She turned to cover me with her soft form, so I was forced to somewhat awaken, while Darrow added his own domestic admiration from behind her.

  I mentioned triple ’vans because we had gained a third, somewhat smaller and older than the others and thus in a more parlous state, yet withal useful, because that’s where Darrow the Elder, and the silent and apart from us but for the stage Fifth Troupe Member now slept and kept their costumes and other belongings, Susie having moved many of hers to be with Amy. So I now had a home up off the cobblestones, and while it was not my own bed, it was the first of such an object since I was an infant.

  Partly this was ascribable to our increased “box office,” as the nightly monetary receipts were euphemistically spoken of, there being a box, if no office. Amy’s increase of new followers were partly responsible for that boon, but so, it turned out, was I. For I soon became a performer in The Invincible Troupe myself, and if I may be immodest, a not terribly unimportant addition to the company, especially to the lasses and womenfolk, for I too had grown, almost as tall as Darrow, and had sprung soft down upon my lip and cheek and chin, which Susie and even Billy did fawn upon.

  The manner of it coming to pass was thus: I have written of how I had slowly accustomed myself to the boards—and boards indeed they were, eight of them of the same thickness and width, that I myself put up and took down along with Billy Darrow. I had gone onstage first in the various non-speaking roles that Darrow’s repertoire called forth.

  In one act was I a silent Royal personage before whom a duel would be fought, or in another a judge, with but one word to utter—“guilty” or “released.” For these I naturally enough took upon myself the colouring that stage powders and paints could provide, and I appeared stern or elderly or authoritative as the role called for. No sooner was my one word said or my four gestures made than I was off the stage and returned to my duties as stage-handy lad moving about this or that scrim or prop—short for furnished property, or the objects needed for the play. On occasion, as I’ve also written, I was a great beau or fop, costumed with extraordinary style and panache but with little to say or do.

  Even in the most stalwart of troupes, actors “go down”—get ill, or depressed, or vanish two days on end with some townsperson, or refuse to leave their caravan from “a case of the sulks.” Our fifth ordinarily silent troupe member was the first to become ill, with a catarrh that interfered mightily with her ability to speak sans a cough. She did lovely work of hiding it or stitching it into the scenes she played, just as though it belonged there. At least she did the first two nights. The third night proved impossible for her to get out of bed or leave caravan three for her feverish state, and thus was I cast in her place.

  The play was the Bard’s Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and the most unlikely part I was to take over for her was the small role of Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother, with but a handful of lines. The largest role I must slip into in her stead was that of Mercutio, playing to Billy as my best friend. I had learned by heart the two speeches already: one fantastical and the other pathetic. Later on, I was to play gruff Friar Laurence, and what lines I was unsure of would be whispered to me by someone or other in the company offstage at the time.

  In the first role of the young smart, I japed much with Darrow, who played Romeo and who, in turn, flirted back at me, giving a new significance to these young men’s close friendship in the play. This impelled one Oxonian within the audience to laugh out loud, “Why! Look! They are as Greek as ever were Italian lads! And I’ll wager as prompt at each other with their cods as with their daggers!” a comment that earned much merriment. Later on, as the Friar, my beard did itch badly, as did my monk’s cowl, and I was eager to be rid of those, but the applause was delightful, and when Mercutio was called for, I vanished and reappeared sans beard and blanket but wearing the other’s doublet and feathered hat, and bowed to even greater kudos.

  Later that night, as we sat in the local public house gobbling down our late and by no means undercooked dinner, ’twas Susie who said of me, “He’s bit. Why, look. As surely as though it were a gadfly upon his nec
k, he’s bit by the streaming limed-lamps, he’s fired up himself and by the yokels’ hand claps—stage-bit, the great dolt!”

  I coloured deeply, for it was not entirely untrue.

  Darrow Elder, who seldom spoke once his tankard was in hand, deigned to utter to me, “A capital Queen Mab, lad.” Then pondering. he added, “A somewhat less creditable death speech.” Which drove us to hilarity, for he could not give aught, not even words, but he must take something back.

  After that night, I remained onstage with The Invincible Theatre troupe, earning my own sobriquet, Monsieur Addison Aries, a name conjured by the Darrows, husband and wife, out of my given name and an old Astrological Almanack one of the company had snitched somewhere in Northern Wales and which they followed closely. They were a superstitious lot, all of them, our mysterious fifth (now sixth) actor included. None of the women stepped onstage without first spitting behind herself and twirling her index finger in a curlicue while uttering below her breath, “Pig’s foot!”

  Though none could tell from whence it all derived, the elder Darrow would not call a single playwright by exact name, but rather referred to one as “The Immortal Bard,” and “The French Rapscallion” for Molière—whose Scapin we travestied rather absurdly. Novelists that we adapted likewise underwent a sea-change, from Dickens to “Frick’em,” for example, and when once I had come upon and was reading a single volume novel about the Antipodes titled Harry Heathcote of Glangoil, the old thing took a look at the author’s name and said, “Anthony Scollop, is it? I read once a book by him—concerning a Mrs. Prudie!” To which I smiled and made myself scarce, for Darrow Elder being friendly was more frightening by far than him being his usual drunken self.

  And so, My Lord, I passed my thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth birthdays as Mercutio and Tybalt, as Friar Laurence and Lady Montague, as Lord Marchmell and the Duke of Tickles, as Raggs the Sheep-herd and Stiggs the Scrivener, as Charles Surface, and Young Dornton, as Captain Absolute and Sir Derleth Tyrone the Younger, as Doctor I. M. A. Dandy and Mlle. Camille du Sprech, as Young Fool and Old Liar, as Unknown Bandit, and First Soldier, once even as Lord Beverley, and twice as Lord Mayor of London; but in short, as a repertoire-actor.

  For Billy Darrow was no fool and knew that whatever extra I earned from him on the boards trebled in farthings, quickly gaining for that new Invincible Troupe actor, M. Aries, his own little “claque,” or so one’s followers are named. I was furthermore useful in so many other ways to his company: as stage worker, as tender lover to his wife, who thus minded less her usurpation in the company by her niece, and thus didn’t make the expected trouble, and not least of all useful as Billy’s own personal Antinous, for I was rich with spunk, and he was determined to mine it out of me one way or t’other.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  In retrospect, those were my golden years. Ah! If only I had appreciated them more at the time. But like most youths, I was drawn to the Mysterious. Unfortunately, one rather perplexing mystery faced me nearly every day. Solving that mystery would be utterly enlightening to me, but it would also, alas, prove my undoing.

  I have mentioned before the sixth member of The Invincible Travelling Theatre. But I have always done so mysteriously and for good reason. Mysteriousness seemed to hover about this troupe member from morn ’til night, despite the greatest illumination thrown from a beneath a fire-lighted lime-light.

  I have said this actor played both male and female. No surprise when so did I, as did Amy Green. I have also said this actor possessed a voice of surpassing range. Singing from a higher soprano than Suzie Darrow down to bass notes our senior-most fellow, old Jonathan Darrow, might encompass. Recall that they boarded together in one wagon, yet utterly apart; and it did not signify that anyone knew the better nor associated the more with this Theatrickal Enigma.

  More than once did I ask Billy Darrow who this Personne de Grand-Chance might be, in truth.

  “Leave it be, Addison, my love, for no good can come of your needing to know.”

  “But surely that person is not of the Darrow kith and kin.”

  “That is so.”

  “Then how came this person to your troupe?”

  “By slow degrees. By a downfall from a greater estate,” Billy said. We were pulling up stakes for the tented enclosure against poor weather that some folks paid a shilling extra for. “But surely, a smart lad like yourself has already discovered that.”

  “You mean because of this person’s great adaptability?”

  “That, too. But who else among us can hold an audience so completely rapt?”

  “Why, yourself,” answered I, ever loyal. “With your tumbles and leaps and tricks.”

  “Aye, that foolishness—and only betimes.”

  “And your sire, too, with his tragic speeches.”

  “All five of them, when he chooses to be sober.”

  “And Miss Green, when she wears her bodice low upon her bust and flirts.”

  “And yourself for all that, when you are dressed in gold and well peruked and flirt with the ladies in the second row,” he said. “But surely you’ve noted how different our Great Person to be?”

  I had and yet could not put it into speech, so I held my own.

  “Do not be bothersome to anyone in the troupe, Addison, or I shall have to whip you, too, among the many fleshly duties I already manage.”

  So was I warned.

  By this time we had begun a new play, Mr. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, much expurgated, given our audiences and their general understanding, chopped back to no more than two hours, albeit full of wit and flirtation.

  Nowhere more so than between the maid, Viola, dressed as a man to court the noble Olivia for Duke Orsino, and Olivia herself. Who then mistakes Viola’s stranded brother, Sebastian, for her as Cesario and forces him to wed her.

  We had rehearsed this, myself as Sebastian for The Invincibles, but most of all playing opposite Suzie, with whom I had been second husband for nigh two years by now, and with whom I felt most congenial.

  All the more of a surprise then, when “Mlle. Genre” came down with a rotten tooth and could not play the opening. And an even greater surprise that Suzie Darrow would then play Viola, a role she knew well, and our fifth person then “took over” the role of Lady Olivia, evidently having been several roles in the play in previous years. Or decades. I knew not which.

  This I discovered as I made the announcement of the parts and the cast, that is to say, before the curtain, and upon opening day, in a rather large market square at the town of Croydon.

  I then ran backstage, where I was fitted into my first costume and went on in my first role as retinue to old Jonathan’s Orsino. Billy played Toby Belch and Antonio and other clownish roles.

  Our mysterious sixth actor as Olivia flirted believably and also gave the part emotion, and even evoked tears in the cheeks of the females of the audience with her sad plight. More than one of them had loved a youth and not been loved in return. Suzie as Viola/Cesario played charmingly and affectingly, too.

  So we arrived at Act Four, Scene One, before Olivia’s house, where I as Sebastian have arrived and now seek to rid myself of Billy’s clown. He returned in a minute as Sir Toby, and we had at each other with soft-sticks, stopped by Lady Olivia’s importuning words.

  She has only just noticed Sebastian and thinks him Cesario. Billy had cut that act’s second scene and so here we are at Scene Three, and all of a sudden, Lady Olivia begins making love to Sebastian. He, being a healthy youth, responds to her beauty and advancements. Passionately and loving, we troth our pledge, and Sebastian is dragged off to a parson to be married. I well knew to play this part ardently and adoringly.

  Astonish me, then, when our mysterious sixth drops all the reserve that had surrounded her with mystery. She grasps my hand tightly, clasps me about the body tighter, stage whispers insinuating and lovingly, and then kisses me so deeply I thought I might lose my wits. I looked baffled, as fitted Sebastian in the play, but in realit
y, too. One who had never before as much as regarded me now seemed to have adored me from afar, and only just then allowed me to understand that. Rustlings among the front seats showed that they too had intuited or somehow understood the real passion exerted betwixt us. From the back-most standees came low whistles and even a growl or two, marking me as a “lucky dog.”

  Nor was I physically released during the short scene behind the curtains, but held ever more closely, with much hand fumbling about my person, so that I stuck out like some fool jackanapes, until I put my clothes in order in time for the final scene in which Viola and Sebastian are re-united and the Duke and she become as one, while Sebastian and Olivia retroth our pledge and all exeunt, leaving Billy all alone to sing, “When I was a tiny little boy, with a hey-ho, the wind and the rain.”

  Behind the curtains once again, I turned to our mysterious sixth and said, “Tonight. A ten o’clock. Be certain old Darrow is dead drunk.” She responded with a hand upon my manhood.

  And so, as the clapping endured—and we two were especially applauded—was that stage that has been my life, and I do not mean that little makeshift stage that was The Invincibles Theatre—set for its next quite dramatic act and transformational scene.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  How inflamed I was after that provincial premiere of Billy’s expurgated Twelfth Night you may easily imagine. Seldom have I been quite so heated.

  The hours I had to wait dragged by like Eternity itself, and it was all I could do to not drink myself ale-blind, as we four, Suzie, Billy, Jonathan, and myself, celebrated our quite substantial take from our performance in a local pub, named—and this is one of those coincidences that makes my life so piquant—the Fallow Deer. Naturally, Billy was looking forward to future performances. We were already the talk of the town, especially as several townsfolk did stop by our table and ask for a repeat the following night. More cheer followed that, you may be assured.