by Bruce Barber
attempt to rationalize his desire to make gifts to the girl.
He didn’t find an address for Kiri. There was no listing for her in the telephone book.
As soon as he got off the train in Stratford, the little city’s charm began to work on him. Winter did there what it does to all places, it transforms, creates a quieter, slower world. For some Stratford people the winter was coldly magical; for others a period of desperation. Keyes supposed that most of the town’s permanent residents welcomed the winter months as a time of respite from the gypsies and the crowds, although without them the Stratford economy suffered.
“What you lose on the roundabout,” Keyes murmured as he walked along the empty streets and glanced into the empty shops, “you gain on the backswing.”
He had no idea what to expect of his meeting with O’Reilly. Keyes’ publisher had liked the biography well enough to make tentative noises about another book. The subject of this future masterpiece was still undecided, but the possibility of it gave Keyes the sense that he might have a source of livelihood for the next year or so, which was a luxury he had not always enjoyed, and certainly not one to sneer at in hard times.
“A tranquil life,” he promised himself of his immediate future, as he approached The Jester’s Bells, “but not without interest.”
(5:5) The Jester’s Bells
O’Reilly was late for their meeting, but Bruno and Julia between them provided Keyes with an excellent lunch, and afterward he passed the time with the newspaper. There were no murders reported in it, or other mysterious deaths, for which he was thankful. There were some curious headlines, however, including one about a robbery which announced,
SUSPECT UDDERS NO PLEA
Keyes borrowed the bar’s scissors from Bruno and clipped it for his editorial horror file.
“I sometimes wonder, Bruno,” he said as he was clipping, “why the English language doesn’t rise up in righteous indignation at maltreatment like this. Everyone else who’s suffered abuse is finally speaking up.”
“Sounds like you’re ready for another beer,” the implacable bartender said.
Keyes allowed as how that was probably true, and accepted the glass happily when it came. Already his Stratford imbibing patterns had returned.
“Mr. Keyes?” said a small voice at his elbow.
He paused with his glass midway between bar and lip.
“Miss Ellison!” he said, with a degree of enthusiasm that surprised him. “Sit down...”
She removed her coat and sat, with a grace he had not seen in her before, a very practised grace, which somehow made it all the more charming to Keyes. He noticed that she wore her usual tiny skirt, but with a grey leotard beneath, and a large denim shirt knotted at the midriff; it was a man’s shirt.
“Mr. O’Reilly told me you’d be in town today...” she said, speaking more shyly than he remembered.
Mr. O’Reilly? he thought. What’s that old goat up to?
“... and I wanted to thank you... for the way... for the things you said.”
Keyes shrugged. “I thought you needed a friend.”
“I did... you were very kind.”
Again Keyes thought about addresses and telephone numbers. Before he could say anything, Kiri broke into a very large smile.
“I’m leaving for Montreal today,” she said with un disguised joy in her voice. “Mr. O’Reilly arranged for me to have an interview at the Theatre School. I’m not sure they’ll take me, but I always thought I was sort of an actress.”
Keyes remembered her performance at The Gilded Lily.
“You certainly have stage presence,” he said with a smile.
“You’re bad, Mr. Keyes,” Kiri said as joyfully as before. “What the hell... it’s worth a shot!”
Keyes wished her luck, then stood to give her a hug as she went on her way. She turned back at the door, smiled again, and after a discreet little grind, followed by the most modest of bumps, exited into the street, with her coat slung carelessly over one shoulder, as if she were invulnerable to the winter chill.
O’Reilly arrived soon afterward, under full sail, waving like a weapon the manuscript Keyes had sent.
“You really are a clod!” he boomed. “And you call yourself a friend? This is inaccurate, unseemly, and it’s going to take me more time than I have to set you straight!”
“Happy birthday, Seamus,” Keyes said.
“I’m too old to have birthdays, but you... you obviously need a few more years to polish up your so-called skills. Julia! Bruno! Anyone – medicine for two sick men!”
More drink was served and when Seamus had properly attended to his, he gestured toward the door.
“Was that my friend Kiri I saw leaving?” he asked.
“Your friend Kiri? What are you up to, Seamus?”
O’Reilly frowned and looked stern. It was the look he often wore when he was playing a priest or a prelate.
“Up to? Up to! You are a vulgar man, Jon-Clod. For God’s sake, the girl is half my age.”
“A third your age is more like it,” Keyes said. “She’s half my age.”
“’What’s age got to do with it?” O’Reilly fumed. “I behaved every bit the gentleman that I am.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
O’Reilly ignored this comment, and continued, still in a mildly paternalistic and priestly mode.
“She has a certain raw talent, and a good voice... untrained, but with potential. Also, she is honest and earthy, an unspoiled novice of Dionysus –”
“O’Reilly, I like the kid, too, but she wouldn’t know Dionysus if he bit her on the ass.”
O’Reilly loomed across the table. “Interrupt me again and your head will be up yours! Let me see... a slender-shanked, dimpled shakti, bright maiden...”
Keyes put his face in his hands.
O’Reilly looked at him. “Not a maiden?”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“All right, then.” O’Reilly raised his glass. “Be that as it may, I sent her off to Montreal. I hope she does well.”
Keyes nodded his agreement. “So, other than you playing Svengali to Miss Ellison’s Trilby, what’s been up?”
“You don’t know? Didn’t I write you? I was going to... ah, well, no matter. I’ve been given Titus Andronicus and a couple of other very good parts next year.”
“That’s wonderful news,” Keyes said. “You’ll make a great Titus.”
“To make matters better,” the beaming O’Reilly continued, “Sandra and I have been asked to do our Byron routine. Might even get a tour out of it!”
Keyes hesitated, then said. “How is Sandra?”
O’Reilly shook his leonine head in a somewhat bemused fashion.
“She’s well,” he said, “but strange. She spends most of her time with that little dresser. I don’t mean to suggest... I mean, I don’t like to speculate on what they’re up to.”
“They’re friends,” Keyes said.
“She does seem happier than she has for some time...”
“Good. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Maybe all that matters.”
O’Reilly made a strangely sub-aquatic sound, a sound he often made when he wanted to change the subject. Keyes thought of it as the sound of the Kraken awakening.
“Now,” O’Reilly said, making a sweeping motion with his hand across the manuscript, the corner of which was quietly soaking up a small puddle of spilled beer, “as to this sketch of yours...”
“My ‘sketch,’ as you call it, is nearly finished,” Keyes said. “This is the final draft – I’m sending it to my publisher as soon as you’ve looked it over.”
“Finished? Final draft? But you’ve left so much out!”
“Because I thought it should be left out; I don’t want to get sued, and I don’t want you to get sued, either.”
“But, Dorabella...”
“I checked with Dorabella,” Keyes said. “She’s happily married, with three children. Her husband is a C.P.A. in Oyster Ba
y, New York, and he has no idea Dorabella was in the theatre before she moved to the States; she hopes that he will never find out she was an actress.”
“Hmm. ‘Actress’ is putting it a bit fancifully...”
“Forget about Dorabella. This book is supposed to be an account of your life on the stage, not under it.”
“There’s no mention of the Othello tour, either,” O’Reilly said peevishly.
“The Othello disaster, you mean. I still don’t understand whatever made you think a one-man Othello was a good idea... or why I went along with it.”
“It worked,” O’Reilly said with grave conviction. “You know perfectly well that it was good... even you were good.”
“As voices offstage? As all those senators, and as Iago, Cassio, Brabantio, Lodovico... are you kidding?”
“You could never grasp that the action was taking place in Othello’s mind –”
“There was no action,” Keyes said. “There was only you in gold brocade, declaiming!”
“It worked,” O’Reilly insisted. “ It felt good; it would have been great, if you hadn’t lost my earring.”
“Me?” Keyes exclaimed, and once again, for perhaps the hundredth time, they launched into an argument about who had lost the earring, without which (so O’Reilly contended) the character of Othello could not be perfectly portrayed. The argument ended where it always did.
“At least you must admit that the San Francisco performance was a triumph,” O’Reilly said.
Keyes laughed. “Yes, it was. What was the name of that theatre? I can never remember.”
“The Golden Hind,” O’Reilly supplied, beaming. “We brought the house down.”
“O’Reilly, the fire brought the house down. I didn’t think we were going to