Shadowplay

by Joseph O'Connor

  Whilst I was looking at the books, the door opened, and the Count entered. He saluted me in a hearty way, and hoped that I had had a good night’s rest. Then he went on.

  ‘I am glad you found your way in here, for I am sure there is much that will interest you. These companions,’ and he laid his hand on some of the books, ‘have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England, and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas! As yet I only know your tongue through books.’

  One sort of felt he was picturing himself, in a way. Provincial lad sort of thing. ‘The whirl and rush.’ Rather good. But it’s only surmising, dear, one could be entirely wrong. Rather. One usually is. But crumbs, Dublin doesn’t sound a lot of larks, though, does it, at the time? One adores the Irish people, darling, their romanticism and so on, such a delicious sense of doom and whiskey-flavoured rain and all the rest, but one shouldn’t have liked to live there. Rather grey. Still wouldn’t. Like Hull with rosary beads, one imagines.

  And they can bore one, the Irish, the way they go on, forever assuming one’s interested when a lot of the time one’s just being polite. Well, the darlings feel they’re so frightfully different to everyone else. Like Americans in that respect. Must be tiring.

  I’d have jolly well scuttled out of the place, starter’s orders, I should think. That’s why we have youth, is it not? Young Brambles and his wife, off they pootled to London. Jolly good luck say I.

  As the black, heaving steampacket inches her way out of Kingstown harbour, a couple married this morning are seen together near the lifeboats on the upper foredeck, hiding their little intimacy behind a white silk parasol.

  Now he sits on a bollard, she perches on his lap. Together they look out in the direction of moonlit Howth Head, his lips caressing the back of her neck until she blushingly laughs and raises the knuckles of his right hand to her mouth. The twin lighthouses wink as though knowing more than they do. Clusters of fat guillemots hover.

  The moon is almost full. Brightness shimmers on the water. When snow starts to fall, the sudden beauty thrills the couple, who have never before witnessed a snowfall at sea, a sight said by mariners to be lucky.

  Later, in a cabin small enough for all four of its walls to be touchable from the bunk, they lie in one another’s arms. He would like there never to be secrets between them now, he whispers, she must feel she can tell him anything, he will be her greatest friend. A storm-lantern dangles from the oaken ceiling. The golden glow flickering and shadowing the corners.

  The creaks and moans of the turbulent ship rise up as the night wears on. Close to dawn, they see the hulk of Snowdonia through the spray-lashed porthole. Dressing, they breakfast together on slices of leftover wedding cake with hot tea and a mouthful of champagne.

  Holyhead, the ugliest town in Britain. Cindery smoke already rising from the locomotive in the station. As they hurry through the belched filth, steam moistens a strand of hair to her forehead and he caresses her face with such tenderness that the porter, a Methodist, looks away and thinks himself on at least two of the commandments as he trundles their trunk towards Third Class.

  Great clouds of yellow light just above the horizon. Through the gorges of Snowdonia, the tunnels and passes, over miraculous bridges the envy of the world and across the flat plains to the Empire’s capital. They sleep through most of the journey, only awakened in the end by the long slow skreek into King’s Cross.

  They are hungry, tired, as he drags their luggage up the steps to the street where thousands are making for work. Clerks in black bowlers, costermongers, chandlers, bankers, tailors, shop-ladies, telegram boys, messengers, maids, carriage drivers, navvies shouldering hods of brick and buckets of hot plaster, gangers digging the road, chimney sweeps, policemen, girls from the paper flower factory, American sailors on shore leave, their slangs and patois arising like a hot sweet mist benedicting the Euston Road. A gang of workmen on their knees with buckets and brushes, trying to scrub away a slogan that has been daubed across a library wall. VOTES FOR WOMEN.

  The boarding house on the back alley off a carriage-lane near the Strand is small and lacks the hoped-for view of the Thames, but the pair of attic rooms to which they are shown by the Italian landlady are cleanly swept and neat enough and the stove has been lit. The vista of rooftops and chimneypots is pleasing, like a French painting. Away in the distance, the mountainous dome of St Paul’s.

  While he unpacks his papers and books, his new wife goes to the market, returns with an armful of flowers: tall lilies, forget-me-nots, meadowsweet. He makes tea on the stove, carefully unhooks the curtains, beats the dust out of them downstairs in the yard, using his tennis racket. After a time he notices her peering down at him, begins to dance about while he thrashes, cursing and threatening and menacing the curtains, which makes her laugh. Such a large man, her husband, a curious bear of a fellow, fuller of uncomplicated kindness than anyone she has known. Everything in him longs for peacefulness. He never speaks to her of his childhood, she gathers it was unhappy. He transmits that he doesn’t want to be asked.

  From time to time as she puts away his clothes into the wormwood dresser and the ancient wardrobe – heavy boots, tweed britches, a deerstalker, a threadbare overcoat – his presence arises from a garment, something faint and clean and intimate behind the smell of thyme soap and launderer’s starch. She holds a hem to her face, feels him enter her body, the pulse of his essence through her bloodstream.

  His cufflinks and tiepins, a watch chain, a clothes brush with velvet back, a worn leather pouch containing an ivory comb and his shaving things, a sable brush, clippers, a razor and strop. How strange, the world of men.

  In a beautifully made little ebony box, the mother-of-pearl comb that is a memento of his father; in the trunk’s side pocket a roll of unused postage stamps, a book called Sex Knowledge for Husbands and a French letter. She is wondering what to do, whether or not she should let on to have found these things, when she notices, behind a fold of old newspaper, a loose panel in the floor of the trunk. Raising it, she finds a notebook with padlocked binding, and the words STRICTLY PRIVATE – NEVER OPEN hand-inked across the cover.

  ‘Flo, my dearest heart? Whatever are you doing?’

  He is breathless in the doorway, his beard and brows grey with dust, a living statue, tennis racket in hand, curtains folded over his arm like a toga.

  A picture she will always have of him.

  Early the following morning they are awakened by their landlady’s husband, a Genovese with incredibly mournful eyes, bearing a basket of fruit, bread and potted meats with boxes of fine teas and a half-bottle of Madeira. A boy from the theatre brought the hamper around just after dawn, he explains, ‘is welcome gift of Signor Irving’. They breakfast in the little courtyard, watching the saddlers prepare the horses. When the landlady and her husband admire the scent of the Indian tea, an expensive blend that is hard to come by in London, the happy couple insist on sharing it.

  The morning is cold and bright. They put on heavy coats and stroll the shaded side of the Strand, marvelling at the jewellers’ windows, the dressmakers’ displays, such profusions of colour and daring new cuts. A year of his salary wouldn’t pay for a gown here. On towards Piccadilly Circus – he points out Giuliano’s – then they pause before the majestic displays of Solomon’s the fruiterer, nectarines, greengages, mangoes, Smyrna figs, boxes of candied peel and Turkish delight, pineapples, Spanish oranges, berries whose names they don’t know.

  The sinister windows of a doll shop on the corner of Regent Street. Porcelain faces, tiny rosebud mouths, eyes that click when they blink, the hair actually human, sold by girls of the slums for black pennies. Turn the doll tummy down, she’ll say ‘m
amma’.

  Sit her on the counterpane. Dress her. Brush her. She’ll watch while you sleep. Almost lifelike.

  Doubled back towards Charing Cross, they enter sweet-aired Green Park, with its bandstands and follies and arbours and rose walks, neater and cleaner than any park back in Dublin.

  ‘How did you sleep, my darling girl? You look a little tired.’

  She takes his hand. ‘Not too well, I’m afraid. There were noises from the street, rough fellows or drunkards or something, serenading their girls. Every time I was about to drop off it seemed to start up again like clockwork. Almost amusing in that way.’

  ‘I’m afraid that goes with cities. We shall get used to it in a while, I expect. We are rather spoiled in Ireland with the quietness.’

  ‘And you snore like a walrus.’ She smiles. ‘You never told me.’

  He feels himself blush to the meats of his teeth. ‘Didn’t know, I’m afraid. Rum state of affairs. My poor little sparrow, I kept you awake.’

  ‘There was another way you kept me awake that was nicer.’

  ‘Was it – what you had hoped?’

  ‘In every way.’ She kisses him. ‘There is no happier woman in all of England this morning.’

  ‘How shall you amuse yourself this afternoon when I have gone to the theatre for my appointment?’

  ‘I thought I might come with you for a bit? I should like to meet my opponent.’

  He laughs. ‘You shall never have an opponent so long as I live.’

  ‘So every Casanova would swear, in order to win a country maiden’s heart.’

  ‘Don’t tease, you owl. I should love you to come if you don’t feel you would be bored.’

  ‘I shall say hello and murder any pretty actresses that might be wafting about in their underthings, then leave you and your precious Lyceum alone, never fear.’

  ‘Once you’ve been a good Protestant wife and saved me from a seduction, how shall you spend the rest of the day?’

  ‘I am going to the British Library for an appointment at two o’clock.’

  ‘With a friend?’

  ‘No, I intend to polish my German. They have a set of wonderful old grammars there at the Reading Room. It shall be pleasantly dull to study in that beautiful place, especially if it’s raining. I love the sound of rain on glass, it gives one a scholar’s headache.’

  ‘You don’t find the German literature a bit abstruse, Flo, rather short on light?’

  She chuckles. ‘At school, it was the austerity of the language that rather attracted me. The other girls adored French and we all had crushes on Sister Marie-Thérèse, but I could never master that “r” sound, you know, or the genders of the nouns. And speaking Italian is so vowelly, like eating a never-ending marshmallow, don’t you find?’

  ‘Wouldn’t know, I’m afraid. You shall have to teach me a little.’

  She squeezes his arm. ‘And then I am going to study the law of copyright and patents.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘So that I can help you in your work. When you write a huge success for us.’

  ‘Honour bright, you have a mightily full dance-card for one day.’

  ‘Then later this afternoon I have an appointment with the Assistant Director of the Mechanics’ Institute in High Holborn.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘An organisation of working men and their families. I mean to offer a series of night-lectures there shortly, essentials of reading, writing and algebra. There is a very great need among the poor.’

  ‘You intend to give lessons, dear? To labouring men?’

  ‘And their wives, yes.’

  ‘But my love, this is a surprise. I am rather taken aback.’

  ‘I thought you should be pleased?’

  ‘Nothing you do or think could ever displease me, my darling, but after all you have no experience—’

  ‘O experience, my sainted aunt, don’t be such an old fusspot. Experience is easily gained, it is merely repetition. Don’t scowl at me so, Bram. Heavens you look so cross and jealous.’

  He touches her face. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘You surely didn’t think I would cluck about the nest like Mother Bird all day, laundering your shirts while I wait for you to come home?’

  ‘Did I not?’

  She pucks him softly. ‘You shall be busy. So shall I be. I mean to bloom where I am planted. In that way, we shall both be happy. What on earth is going on over there, Bram. Look?’

  He glances towards the copse of limes a hundred yards across the lawn. A squadron of Beefeaters in scarlet and black livery, bayonets drawn, forms a human square around a group of expensively dressed ladies as an immense red rug is unrolled by servants across the grass. Butlers unpack picnic baskets and ice buckets under a forest of silver parasols. Among them, a photographer is setting up his tripod and hood. A cheer goes up from the watching crowd. Someone produces a Union flag.

  ‘She appears younger,’ Florence says. ‘Don’t you think so, Bram?’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Look again, silly boy. In the centre. Wearing the pretty silk slippers. You have many gifts but you are not tremendously observant, my dear. Fancy, our first morning in London and we have already seen the queen. Must surely be a good omen, don’t you think?’

  — V —

  In which an offer of employment is altered

  Gulls over Waterloo Bridge as a tall ship glides past, dreamlike. London’s church bells pealing ecstasies for noon.

  The Lyceum is chained up, the glass in its noticeboards cracked, the entrance steps thick with withered leaves and broken bottles. The portico has been used by street people as a latrine; the padlocks on the main doors are black with old rust. Down the street, the marble splendour of the Royal Opera House gives a look of pitying condescension. You poor abandoned hovel.

  They walk around the Lyceum, into narrow Exeter Street, which is cobbled and dark, the gloom thrown by the height of the warehouses on either side. There must be a Stage Door but there’s no signpost or notice. Tramps dossing in the alcoves. A tart peers down from her tiny cruciform window. Stoker is thinking: what have I done?

  A portly little man in Jewish prayer shawl and black hat appears from around the corner, leading a dray horse and heavy wagon.

  ‘You are maybe lost, my friends? Where is it you seek?’

  ‘We are trying to gain entry to the theatre,’ Florence replies.

  ‘Come with me. I am Yankel the woodman. Come along. You will come.’

  They follow as the elderly mare clops around to Burleigh Street, her affable master explaining that he delivers the fuel to the Lyceum’s furnaces, has been doing so for years, has seen ‘many amusing sings’. ‘In there,’ he says, indicating a metalled wooden door with a Judas hole. ‘Knock thrice. Walter will admit. Go, go.’

  Before they can do as advised, the hefty door is hauled open, not by Walter but by a whey-faced girl of about thirteen who, without a word of greeting, turns and skips away down the dark corridor. Entering, they close the door.

  Everything so quiet. Only the distant drip of water and the muffled calls of a costermonger out on the pavement.

  ‘Dogs’ meat here. Nice dogs’ meat.’

  At the end of the passage squats a lopsided desk. From the blotter, their approach is regarded by a black one-eyed cat, now hackling with a guttural hiss.

  ‘Don’t be so unpleasant,’ Florence laughs.

  Now they see its three companions, staring from the shadows: scrawny, yellow-eyed, queenly, resentful. Clowns grin from ancient posters, harlequins caper. The gone-off-fruit stench of long-unlaundered linen. Mushrooms sprouting on the walls.

  Up a staircase. Along a corridor lined in red velvet plush. Every picture on every wall is crooked or broken. More cats. Cats in alcoves. Cats on ripped chairs. Scrobbing their claws on the walls of the crush bar. Slinking out from between the filthy curtains of the opera-boxes. Ahead now, a pair of folding doors. Beyond, a hubbub of noise.

  The a
uditorium is a forest of poles, rigs and scaffolding, platforms slung from the ceiling, ladders, guy ropes, lamp chains. There must be a hundred men working. Carpenters, scene painters, upholsterers installing seats, musicians on the stage in the midst of the racket, somehow attempting to tune up while booms of stage thunder rumble. Squeaky clarinets. Shouts. The shriek of violins. Navvies tearing out seating-boxes with jemmies and crowbars, smashing down lath-and-plaster partitions with lump-hammers. Bits of scenery being shunted – here a clifftop, there a battlement. And the curious sensation that all of it is being put on for your benefit, that nothing was happening until a moment before you arrived.

  ‘I say.’ Stoker stops a man who is hurrying past carrying a wild animal that turns out to be an armful of wigs.

  ‘How do, squire?’

  ‘I am here to report to Mr Irving. This is my wife.’

  ‘Who?’

  From the flies above the stage comes a call – ‘Look out, below’ – as an immense painted backdrop of a sea-storm is unfurled, dark blues and silvered greens, a great ship thrashing through vast breakers, the sky riven by slashing zeds of lightning but the canvas ruined by mould stains and asterisk-shaped holes and heavy parallel creases from having been rolled too long. Looking up at the forlorn spectacle, the musicians cheer bleakly.

  ‘You are here, then.’

  Stoker turns.

  Irving, grinning. His long, slim face blacked, sensual lips heavily rouged. The robe he has on is scarlet and silver with a druidic collar so high it comes up to his ears.

  ‘Welcome to our little island of beauty,’ he says. ‘I hope you shall find the happiness here that has long eluded you.’

  The handshake is limp and lingering. Something impressive and yet absurd about him, like the tallest girl in the class, but the taut mouth unsmiling now, the eyes dead as whelks.

  ‘Forgive me if my dress startled you. I have been sitting for a portrait photograph this morning as Othello. Some wretch asked me to do it and in a weak moment I agreed. Why does one wish to obtain the fleeting gratitude of fools? But I do not like to be portrayed. I always look like someone else. Men should be what they seem. Have you ever sat for a portrait yourself?’